Order Up
by Totenkinder Madchen
Summary: Even elite military units need to eat. And as for the poor bewildered private who gets transferred in to help in the Pit kitchen-well, she may need something else. Like a vacation. Inspired by "In the Line of Duty." T for language.
1. Opening Time

**Author's Note: **This is a slightly different tack from my previous work, since it's both multichaptered and an attempt to combine drama and humor. It's building on ideas suggested by a previous story of mine, "In the Line of Duty." That story focused on the lives of the Joes from the perspective of a semi-outsider—the head quartermaster for the Pit. For this, I'm expanding on that concept but switching to a different viewpoint.

I had some difficulty figuring out where exactly the quartermaster corps would fit into the lives of the Joes. An established base would probably have professional cooks in its kitchens, but since the Pit is a secretish place, I can see it being staffed by military personnel instead. And since the Joes are such an odd mixture of formal and informal, it's likely that there'd be some discrepancies between how a real base operates with its quartermasters and how the Joes would do things. If you spot a major mistake, please point it out, and I'll do my best to fix it. Thanks!

**Rating: **T for swearing and some later adult humor.

**Disclaimer:** GI Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

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**Order Up**

by Totenkinder Madchen

* * *

After a certain point, the code names just got ridiculous.

Private first class Annie Gorshin had a long history with food, and with silly names too. As a child in Hollis Junction, Illinois, Annie had been practically raised behind the counter of the family diner. She'd spoken diner lingo—the staccato, occasionally bizarre code used by cooks and waitresses all across the United States—for as long as she could remember. On a practical level, Annie saw nothing wrong with singing out "Burn one with moo juice!" in a crowded restaurant: it wasn't as simple as "make another cheeseburger," but it was more entertaining, and helped the blizzard of incoming orders stand out from each other. She'd been bussing tables as soon as she could see over them, and waitressing soon after that.

But school didn't pay for itself, and these days, wages from a roadside diner didn't help much either. Annie had dropped Home Ec class, swapped tutoring help for physical conditioning help with the track team, and joined the Army. There were scholarship programs for veterans, after all. She hadn't anticipated being picked out for the Quartermaster Corps.

In retrospect, it should've been obvious. Maybe she wasn't the most outstanding soldier, but she could cook a lot of edible food fast, and that was a skill that was in demand. Annie had been deployed overseas, transferred among a few different units, done her job, and managed to get a few citations for good performance in her jacket. Yet when she'd been given the orders to transfer to General Abernathy's "special" unit, whatever that was, she hadn't minded. Specialists usually had better kitchens, better equipment, and hell, better pay for their overworked support personnel, too. It beat combat deployments, where food arrived dehydrated in hundred-pound drums and the mashed potatoes came out of a box that said "contains no potatoes." Gen. Abernathy's people didn't want her for her combat skills, they wanted somebody who could feed a lot of people quickly. Annie didn't mind that.

But soon after arriving, Annie had run headlong into the almost stifling air of secrecy that lay over the whole business, and she found herself getting acquainted with yet another set of silly names.

It wasn't General _Abernathy _she reported to—no, it was General _Hawk, _who would be most often seen making the rounds with a bandage on his arm or a bruised cheek while his stars lay in a drawer. And when Annie got to the kitchens (and good God, she'd never seen such kitchens! Commando units got better chow as a rule, but this was downright ludicrous), she found herself surrounded by half a dozen other cooks, none of whose names had actually appeared in her briefing.

Shingle, Whiskey Down, Eighty-Six, Chopper, S.O.S. and Murphy all took their turns introducing themselves. They had varying degrees of experience: Whiskey Down, the oldest, had a master sergeant's stripes and and the distinctive splay-legged gait of an old-school BAR man, while S.O.S. was a lance corporal with white-blonde hair still growing out of the standard jarhead high-and-tight and a nervous habit of tapping his fingers while he worked. Five of them were Quartermaster Corps; the lone exception was Shingle, who'd apparently been transferred on the strength of a particularly impressive shortcake recipe.

"It's small, for a base," Whiskey Down had told Annie as he showed her around the kitchens. "There's between eighty and a hundred special operatives on base at all times, and double that in support personnel and new recruits—greenshirts, we call 'em. You're a greenshirt, which means you get introductory hand-to-hand and basic PT with the rest of 'em, but you're on assignment with us. And since you didn't specify a preferred code name on your paperwork, we've picked one for you."

Well, wasn't that kind of them. Annie Gorshin had received her orders: from that day out, she would be known as Short Stack.

Fucking code names.

Granted, it could've been worse. Every part of this whole base was absolutely one hundred percent secret and classified, which meant that even support personnel were required to remain discreetly anonymous and adhere to the secrecy regulations. (That, at least, Annie could respect—after all, she'd met a few commanders who assumed that people wound up in the quartermasters because they were too stupid to do anything else. Those commanders tended to be completely blind to the kind of things you could overhear in an echoing kitchen.) And since she thought at first that their assigned names were based solely on their abilities . . . well, Annie had to admit that she could cook a mean pancake. But really—_Short Stack? _

Eighty-Six, the only other female on the kitchen brigade, kindly filled her in while she got her gear stowed in the women's barracks. Personality was a part of the naming process, but so was "dignity." (Her word.) "If you wanted t'give out names real accurate," she said, the words smoothed together mellifluously by her thick New Orleans accent, "S.O.S. oughtta be Twitchy Li'l Bastud an' Murphy should go by Keeps That Bottle in the Cupboard that We Ain't Supposed t'Know About. But usin' diner lingo sounds nicer, an' none of the other Joes ever worked in a restaurant long enough t'know that S.O.S. stands for Shit on a Shingle."

Annie had to laugh a little at that. "What did S.O.S. do to get named after dried beef on toast, anyway?" she asked, flopping onto her bunk and beginning to undo her boots.

"Welllll . . . originally, he was goin' by Short Order, 'cos back then he was the shortest one in the kitchen. But the first time Roadblock took over, he tried t'teach the li'l guy how to make his special beef compote. His effort wasn't that impressive, if y'know what I mean. He was pretty much stuck as S.O.S. from then on. He's a Navy guy, though, so he swears that's where he got it."

"Roadblock?" Annie blinked, making a mental readjustment. Right. A person, not an obstacle. "Is he a quartermaster too? I thought the senior QM was, uh, 'Storage Vault.'"

This time, it was Eighty-Six who laughed. She explained that Roadblock ("Damn accurate name, fa'true, y'd hit 'im with a truck an' he'd never even know it") was a sergeant and heavy infantry specialist who was nevertheless acknowledged as the greatest cook on the base. Apparently, it was his habit to take over the kitchen for one or two meals every week, sending even the senior Whiskey Down scurrying. Annie couldn't help but be surprised at what sounded like a blatant breach of the chain of command—but when she mentioned that to Eighty-Six, she just got another husky laugh. "You gonna learn quick, Short Stack," she said. "'Round here, a lot of rules get chucked out. People doin' these kind'a jobs got a right to pass a good time when they can, so General Hawk looks the other way most often."

Despite her new acquaintance's assurances, though, Annie couldn't quite believe that. Abernathy was a damn _brigadier general, _stars and everything, commendations out the ass if even half the official reports were accurate. As Eighty-Six went on and on—describing dress code violations, shattered frat regs, and unauthorized use of highly experimental equipment, all in the same loving tone Annie's mother would use to gossip about the mayor's wife's affair with a minister—Annie found herself skeptical. Specialists or no, enough was enough. Just how stupid did they think she was, anyway?

Come _on. _A _ninja?_


	2. Warming Up

**Author's Note:** Annie's first PT session as Short Stack, and also her first glimpse of the main Joe team.

A note on the code names: All of the quartermasters have names derived from diner lingo. Short Stack and S.O.S. have already been explained, but the others have their own meanings too. Shingle is toast; Whiskey Down is _rye_ toast; a Murphy is a potato; Eighty-Six is flexible slang referring to either an off-menu item or an undesirable customer; and Chopper means butcher knife.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Warning:** this chapter contains adult implications and more bad language, all of which is Beach Head's fault. I never yet met a DI who kept things G-rated, especially when it comes to jodies. The Joes just have a few more interesting things to be rude about.

**Disclaimer: **GI Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

**

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**

Chapter Two: Warming Up

* * *

Being part of the food service corps didn't make you exempt from the usual drills, but it did mean that your schedule was altered slightly. Breakfast was served in the main mess from 0645 to 0830, every day—prime PT times. Quartermasters, no matter how long they'd served, got early PT in the same time slot as the brand-new greenshirts. Annie was both, and there was no escape: she found herself stretching out with the rest of them at 0515, on the damp grass at the edge of the parade ground.

In the distance, she could hear what sounded like the bellow of a wounded bull, if said bull had an Alabama accent and a colorful vocabulary. It grew louder, and with it came more sounds: the thud of two dozen feet in regular rhythm, the jingle of buckles, straps and tags, and the rhythmic roar of twelve men calling out in unison. Then the Alabama voice raised again, not sounding happy.

"Who's laggin' back there?" the voice bellowed. "Is that Tunnel Rat? Get yer ass in gear, you goddamn slacker! I'm not seein' any motivation here!" It changed, falling into the rhythm of the classic seven-syllable military cadence. Annie had heard a lot of them before, but never this one.

"Tomax and Xamot had a fight-"

"_Tomax and Xamot had a fight!" _the small unit chanted back.

"Just like they do every night!"

_"Always fighting every night!"_

"'Cause each time Xamot jerks it off-"

_"Each time Xamot jerks it off-"_

"Tomax turns his head an' coughs!"

_"Tomax turns his head and coughs!"_

"This ain't a Girl Scout party, Cinderella, what the hell you laughin' at? Naughty language too much for yer delicate ears? Sound off!"

_"One, two!"_

"Sound off!"

_"Three, four!"_

Anne turned to Eighty-Six. "What the hell-?" she began.

"Tomax and Xamot? Long story."

The PT party came to a halt at the edge of the parade ground, dripping sweat but at perfect attention nevertheless. The greenshirt-quartermaster group formed up themselves, albeit with less crispness than the other, while the source of the Alabama voice—a Rottweiler of a man in a balaclava—stalked up and down the line, snapping orders. Annie took the opportunity to get a good look at the people she would be making pancakes for later.

First off, she'd been wrong in her original estimate: two of them were women, one a tall redhead, the other a slightly smaller and more slender brunette. The latter was the one currently being addressed as "Cinderella" by the PT demon, making Annie inwardly cringe: compared to _that _code name, Short Stack seemed positively complimentary. The ten men were as mixed a bag as she'd ever seen, even in the armed forces. Chalk one up for Eighty-Six's stories—many of the clothes on display were hardy and practical, but definitely nonregulation. The man at the end of the line, a slender Asian fellow with wiry muscles, was wearing some loose white outfit that looked more like pajamas than workout gear. And next to the redheaded woman . . . was that a mask? What the hell?

Eighty-Six discreetly elbowed her and pointed out one of them, a huge black man with shoulders that looked to Annie to be wider than some cars. "Roadblock," she said sotto voce. The name was definitely applicable, but he didn't look like a master chef to Annie. On the other hand, he _did _look like the kind of person who could tenderize a steak with a hard look, so Annie was definitely not going to be jumping to any conclusions on that score.

"All right!" the PT demon bawled at the twelve ramrod-straight soldiers. "Yer all gonna run your lazy asses down to the firing field an' put yerselves into the tender care of Sgt. Slaughter. He swears he's finally come up with an obstacle course that'll beat mine, and he's just dyin' to put you all through it. If anyone's plannin' on laughin,' do it now, 'cause we all know how damn touchy he is. Fall out!"

Just like that, the line dissolved from a military unit into . . . into groups of friends, Annie thought. All twelve of them took off at a dead sprint across the field, but the redhead and Cinderella drifted towards each other, and both the weird masked man and the Asian fellow fell into step on either side of them. The little one—Tunnel Rat? What kind of a name was that?—immediately picked up what sounded like an interrupted conversation with a taller man in desert-print cammies. Three more, judging by their chatter, were motor-pool jockeys. But Annie couldn't hear much, because all twelve were jogging off across the parade ground again, and the PT demon was coming to a halt in front of her group.

"For those of you who ain't been around here long-!" he began. Annie tried not to flinch. If Roadblock could tenderize a steak with a look, this one could probably turn it into hamburger with his lung power alone. He didn't pause, he merely broke off in mid-shout. "The name's Beach Head! It's my job to get you all into fightin' shape, and I don't care how many feelings I have to bruise or pushups I have to hand out to do it! You're in the big leagues now, boys and girls—G.I. Joe is _the _best, end of story. Anybody who ain't willing to work for the privilege can wash out right now. Any takers?"

He stalked up and down the line, leveling a glare at each one of them in turn. Annie's fellow greenshirts wore their feelings clear on their faces—some worried, some confident, one even flamboyantly bored. The experienced members of the quartermaster corps, unwillingly lumped in with the new recruits by an accident of time slot, met the stare unflinchingly: Beach Head's speech was probably so familiar as to roll right off them. Annie, caught uncomfortably between the two groups, couldn't quite suppress the feeling that she was facing the largest, scariest, and most unsatisfied customer ever.

"Name!" Beach Head bellowed at the first greenshirt in line. The man came promptly to attention with a near-audible snap.

"Spit-Shine, sergeant!" Annie could believe it: she'd never seen anybody so clean and put together this early in the morning.

"Specialization?"

"Undercover, sergeant!"

"Spit-Shine, then—what the hell d'you think yer doin'? Goin' on a tour of the countryside? Get up early to put that pretty crease in yer pants, did you? Listen up, greenie: there's clean, and then there's wastin' time that a real Joe would be usin' to get some sleep. You ain't on an undercover mission now, an' if you're worryin' about starchin' yer shirts before PT, then you ain't Joe material. Fifty situps oughtta take the crease outta them pants."

Annie blinked. Was "Beach Head" for real? In what universe did Army officers punish their recruits for being too _clean? _She had the distinct sensation that she was in the Twilight Zone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eighty-Six flash her a quick grin. The feeling of disorientation grew stronger.

Beach Head moved down the line, intimidating the socks off her fellow greenshirts and, she couldn't help noticing, yelling their names—and their particular faults—loud enough for any passing soldiers to hear and note. When he came to her, standing stiffly between the quartermasters and the greenshirts, she quailed a little as she wondered what he'd find wrong with her. She tried to peek down, checking for protruding underwear or toilet paper stuck to a shoe. There didn't seem to be anything--

"Name!"

"Short Stack, sergeant!"

"New cook?"

"Yes, sergeant!"

"What's today's menu?"

Annie blinked. That wasn't the kind of thing PT instructors said. "Sir?"

The shout almost jolted her off her feet. "I ain't a damn sir, I'm a sergeant! And I_ asked you a question, midget! _We already got a mute around here, we don't need a damn deaf QM! Answer the question!"

"Yes, sergeant! Breakfast—pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, fruit salad-"

Beach Head interrupted. "That's enough! In case you ain't noticed, Shortie, we here are what we like t'call a 'military operation.' And that means payin' attention when someone asks you a question! Damn well better hope you cook better'n you listen; the local spooks don't take kindly to bein' poisoned."

Though that statement sounded like it was inviting a comment, Annie knew better than to respond: she was new, but not _that _new.

To her inexpressible relief, Beach Head moved on without further comment. He seemed more satisfied with her fellow cooks—or less openly hostile, at any rate, since he only bellowed once and seemed primarily concerned with matters like "you beatin' your pathetic time on the laps, Murphy, you damn slug!" Then, taking a deep breath, he roared for them to _"FALL OUT! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW GOD DAMMIT!" _and, with a positively boisterous swing in his step and a voice that was as fresh and clear as ever despite the yelling, proceeded to set them running at a completely murderous pace.

* * *

The quartermasters were released from PT after only forty minutes, but to Annie, it might have been years. Her arms and legs dragged her down like lead weights as she shuffled across the grass towards the chow hall. Behind her, Beach Head was still happily abusing her fellow greenshirts, a few of which had shot her baleful glances as she departed with her fellow quartermasters.

Chopper, a burly ex-biker turned sandwich specialist, aimed a grin at Annie that she thought she understood. "'I am Quartermaster,'" he recited solemnly, quoting from the QM corps' creed. "'My story is enfolded in the history of this nation. Sustainer of Armies, but getting no thanks for it. Dodger of PT. My forges burned at Valley Forge, and some jackass was probably saying we were stupid then too. But who's laughing now, huh?'"

Despite her exhaustion, Annie choked out a laugh. The sensation burned her throat a bit, but it felt good anyway. "I don't think that's quite the authorized version, Chopper," she managed to say.

Chopper shook his head. "No such thing as the authorized version in this unit, Short Stack. Or did you not see the ninjas in that lineup?"

"Oh, come on," Annie said. "I saw a guy wearing a mask. Probably dealing with a facial injury or something. Don't you think it's time to lay off the ninja stuff? I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

The disbelief definitely came through in her voice, because Whiskey Down muttered something impolite. "Didn't you get your orders? Cobra, special antiterrorism unit, the whole bit?"

"Well, yes. I mean, I know there's commandos on base, and a lot of experimental equipment and techniques and things. You just need to look at this place to know that." Annie waved a hand, indicating the broad parade ground. "But there's a difference between a commando and a _ninja. _General Abernathy—um, _Hawk—_called them 'uniquely trained combat specialists._"_

Whiskey Down sighed audibly. "You carry on thinking that. When are you getting your secondary briefing?"

"Er . . ." Annie mentally checked her schedule. "Four days from now."

"There you go, then. If you're going to wash out, you'll probably do it in the next four days. If you don't, then you get your secondary briefing, and Hawk fills you in on the details. Things like 'a masked commando is actually a ninja,' and 'only Breaker gets to chew gum in the monitor room.'"

" . . . right."

"Hey, this is top-secret military stuff!" S.O.S. broke in. "They're not gonna hand it out to just every recruit, not when Beach Head scares off half of 'em right away."

"Look, S.O.S. If top-secret military stuff includes the word 'ninja,' I think they could probably be handing out copies of their files at the gate. There's a reason I'm skeptical." Annie stretched, feeling her muscles creak. Though to be fair, Beach Head was an extremely eloquent argument for the overall bizarrity of the unit.

She checked her watch. 0557. Forty-five minutes to get everything fired up and start in on breakfast for between eighty and a hundred people—a tighter time frame than she was accustomed to. But then, she'd never been in any kind of "elite unit" before, and it was no surprise that they'd run a tighter ship than the other bases. Besides, elite or not, there was always a few soldiers on KP to help out.

Annie had checked the KP duty roster before heading out that morning. That was one good thing about the names: just like diner lingo, they were easy to remember. But like "shit on a shingle," memorability wasn't always good. She couldn't help wondering about the mental state of career soldiers who would, without a word of complaint, call themselves Beach Head . . . Cinderella . . . and that poor bastard on the KP roster who went by, of all things, "Mutt."

But it was time for them to get cooking. She could worry about strange names and mentally unstable soldiers later.


	3. The KP is Always Right

**Author's Note:** Annie gets up close and personal with a particular member of the Joes, and learns a few things about how intimidating a request for bacon can be.

Before beginning—yes, I realize that a military kitchen probably wouldn't allow a dog in. But the Joes seem to have a very casual attitude towards Junkyard in general; his very first appearance shows him going on a slobber attack in the mess hall on the _Jane, _and he certainly seems to have full liberty of the base. Short Stack has only had experience with regular dogs—she doesn't know Junkyard.

Also, regarding the issue of stripes: a lot of Joes don't seem to wear them while they're in BDUs, though whether that's a tactical decision or an accident on the part of the illustrator I'm not sure. I'd guess it's a bit like Hawk not always wearing his stars—in the Pit, where practically everybody's a sergeant, the chain of command can get a bit tangled, and wearing your stripes would seem pointless when everyone knows everyone anyway.

And that leads me to my final point—a thank-you to CrystalOfEllinon, who kindly pointed out an error I'd made in the mode of address for private to sergeant. Thanks! I hope I've fixed it satisfactorily. And if anybody spots any other errors, I'd appreciate you letting me know about those too, so I can clean them up.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

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**Chapter Three: **The KP is Always Right

* * *

The Pit kitchens fairly gleamed. Polished steam tables and rows of shining equipment reflected the stark white walls, and the tile under their feet was dove-gray and scrubbed to perfection. A dozen other soldiers, not strictly quartermasters but assigned to the kitchen on an informal basis, were already clattering around and warming up the stoves. Aside from the fact that they'd swapped out their desert boots for rubber clogs, the whole place looked like pretty much every other base kitchen she'd served in—albeit one so clean she could probably perform surgery there.

Though the Joes did some things backwards, Annie was on her home turf here. The quartermaster-cooks, herself included, would each take control of a station and a group of soldiers. It was no secret that Short Stack would be on pancake duty.

Her assistants today were six fellow greenshirts, three of whom were assigned to the kitchen as a rule and three of whom, to judge by their grumbling, had pulled KP for doing something spectacularly stupid where Beach Head could see them. Annie might have been the greenest of the green as far as the Joes were concerned, but she knew her way around a kitchen. She immediately collared two of the biggest and sent them running for the heavy ingredients—flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, and (to her greenshirts' obvious surprise) a few ounces of white vinegar.

Whiskey Down had made a few things clear the day before while he was giving her the initial tour. The Joes, whoever they were or whatever they did that was so damn classified, got fed well. And with a smaller base than usual, there wasn't so much of a call for the hundred-gallon drums of freeze-dried food substitute that got ordered up when there were five or ten thousand mouths to feed. Pancake mix was right out, but so was haute cuisine. The Joe kitchens existed somewhere in the middle between five stars from Zagat's and five-syllable preservatives on the labels.

That didn't mean subtlety was called for, though. The pancake ingredients went into several huge steel bowls, each half the size of those drums that she so disliked, and burly Army grunts were set to the mixing and sifting. Annie hefted a five-gallon jug of milk, staggering a little under the weight, and dumped the whole thing into another giant bowl. A measure of vinegar followed it. Maybe somewhere, the giant Roadblock would be wincing, his chef-sense telling him that someone was making buttermilk substitute in bulk. But that was a diner trick: mixed fast, tasted good to the grunts, and probably wouldn't make anyone throw up.

Annie grinned a little as she threw herself into the work. Discard the empty jug—time for cleanup when the rush was over. Don't bother "folding" the wet ingredients into the dry, just dump it in there—it really made no difference. She could hear Murphy shouting at someone, and the hiss of the long griddle as the first of the day's sixty pounds of sausage and bacon began to fry. Warmth, and the delicious smell of breakfast, filled the huge kitchen. This was the sort of thing she was good at. Lunatic DIs and cracked claims about ninjas were forgotten as she worked, content in what she did best.

Then she turned around, and promptly fell over the dog.

It wasn't a _big _dog, but when Annie found herself on the floor with it crouched over her, her first impression was that she'd been hit by the offspring of a Labrador and a Mack truck. She yelped and tried to shove it off, but the dog dodged her flailing arm and sat down firmly on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her.

"There's a fucking dog in here!" she managed to wheeze, slapping ineffectively at the monster. Something horribly familiar, warm and damp, coated her hands—oh god, had it bitten her? Was she bleeding? "Help!"

"JUNKYARD!" someone yelled. Probably not the word most commonly associated with kitchens. Annie pulled at the animal's collar in an attempt to get him off her, realizing belatedly that the stuff on her hands was actually drool.

"Hey, you!" the voice shouted. "Stop yanking on my dog!"

She thought she heard Whiskey Down laugh, but the sensation was overriden by the dog's enthusiastic attempts to lick her face. With a groan, she rolled over and managed to shove it off her, but that didn't seem to deter it; it just bounced back to its feet and went for her again, evidently concerned about the fact that she didn't have enough slobber on her face yet. Annie leapt back, scrabbling on the counter for a pan or something to throw at it.

Her attempts to defend herself against the ravening beast were rudely interrupted by an equally rude man, who stampeded into her line of vision and proceeded to glare the dog into submission. He was wearing the by-now familiar Joe greens and had no stripes, but seemed to labor under the delusion that he needed a helmet, goggles, and a muzzle to work in the kitchens.

"Junkyard!" he shouted again, and the dog retreated slightly. "Down! I said DOWN! I mean it!"

The dog paused, considered, flicked its ears forward, and—Annie would swear—grinned at the irritated man.

"Whiskey? Uh, Whiskey?" she called, trying not to make eye contact with the worryingly affectionate dog or the man in the muzzle. "There's a dog. In the kitchen."

Whiskey Down looked up from the grill, never pausing as he flipped hash browns onto it. "He didn't get into the bacon, did he?" he said, a little too casually to be entirely serious. "Junk's supposed to be watching his weight."

"What? No. Whiskey Down, there is a dog. In the _kitchen." _Annie couldn't believe she had to even mention it. "That's a blatant health violation! What would the senior QM say?"

"Hey, wait a minute!" the muzzled man snapped. He tossed a milk bone to Junkyard, who caught it eagerly and began to chow down—_right in the middle of the clean kitchen floor, _Annie noticed, wincing. "Are you saying my dog's dirty?"

Annie stepped back, wondering if the man was rabid. He sure looked about ready to bite. "He's a dog," she said carefully. "Dogs are _not _allowed in kitchens. You have to get that thing out of here."

"He's not making any trouble. I'll give him his squeaky rubber bone." This was clearly as far as the man was willing to go for the sake of compromise; any insult to his dog seemed to be an insult to him. Never mind that his damn dog was taking precious time out of her cooking schedule-

"Look, private," she said as icily as she could. "Dogs drool. They bite. They shed and shit and do things like jump on unsuspecting cooks and get dog hair in the pancake batter. Get it out of here, _now_. And if you're not on KP, get yourself out of here too!"

"Oh, he's on KP," Chopper called from across the kitchen. He was slicing fruit at lightning speed, but seemed to have no qualms about taking his eyes off the giant knife to watch the show. "He was supposed to be in your group, but Junkyard had to go for walkies. Oh, and for future reference? He's a sergeant."

Annie froze.

Oh, hell.

"Um," she began eloquently. Mutt's eyes were narrowed, and Junkyard's tongue lolled out of his mouth in seeming amusement. "I. Um. Sergeant."

Then Mutt turned away, muttering "Goddamn greenshirts," and Annie breathed again. He patted his dog's head, producing enthusiastic slobber from the animal.

She wanted to shout at somebody, frankly. How was this not a blatant violation of every health regulation in the book? But Whiskey Down seemed totally unconcerned with the dog's presence, and Eighty-Six was doing that increasingly annoying "told ya so" wink across the kitchen anyway. Was this the unit for terminally insane officers, then? Did they mean "specialist" as in "Johnny rides the short bus because he's special"? Or perhaps the head QM had killed someone and Junkyard had dug the body up. Hell, considering how Mutt looked, she wouldn't have put it past him to do the digging himself. Probably hunting for his own squeaky rubber bone.

But . . . dammit, breakfast was about to begin. Annie hastily wrenched a few sterilizing wipes out of the ever-present box on the counter, gave her face and hands a quick scrub, and then turned back to her sadly uncompleted pancake batter. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mutt ordering Junkyard into the corner—where the animal made himself comfortable on, for Christ's sake, a sack of flour. Annie considered banging her head against the counter, but that would've been yet another health violation.

Finish mixing the ingredients. Divide the batter amongst the greenshirts and haul it all down to the far end of the long electric griddle, far enough away from the bacon to avoid mixing sweet and savory. Set them to pouring and shaping. Ignore the fact that the crazy man with the dog was now right behind her.

How the hell did a sergeant wind up on KP, anyway?

Though come to think of it, that dog might have something to do with it.

"Short Stack!" Chopper called out. Annie wanted to pretend she couldn't hear him, but that wouldn't be professional. Not when the breakfast rush was starting in fifteen minutes.

"Yes?" she said as she flipped over the first of the pancakes.

"Mutt needs to work too, you know."

Mutt apparently disagreed with this, but the look he shot Chopper seemed not to register on the cook. For Annie, pretending to be oblivious was looking better and better. The man even _smelled _like dog. But if he really was a sergeant, and he was supposed to be on KP, then she was risking both charges of insubordination and "contributing to the delinquency of a fellow soldier" if she didn't give him something to do. Maybe, if she was lucky, that would turn out to be one of those regulations that the whole Joe base seemed to be ignoring with abandon . . . but for now . . . hell.

At least she could keep him out of the danger zone. "Scrub," she said, pointing to the now-empty batter bowls. Mutt grumbled something, but the muzzle made it impossible to hear, something Annie was extremely grateful for. He grabbed the first of the bowls off the counter with evident ill will and headed over to the sink where, thank God, he would be in close contact with hot water and soap. Annie turned her attention back to the pancakes. In stark contrast to the rest of her day so far, they were behaving exactly like they ought to be.

She moved down the line, overseeing the greenshirts as they flipped the pancakes. The first batch was about done. Pull those off the griddle, then; put 'em in the steel trays that would help keep them warm on the steam tables; send one of the greenies to bring the tray out to the servers on the line. Everybody else had settled into the rhythm of the work, and there was no more chatter. When Mutt dropped a bowl on the linoleum, sending an echoing clang bouncing off the walls of the kitchen, Annie was the only one that jumped.

By the time the fourth tray of pancakes went out, though, she could hear more than just the general bustle of the kitchen. Voices were coming in through the open door—cheerful shouts, a variety of curses in different languages and accents, and a female voice coolly informing someone what exactly would happen if said someone didn't stop using all the miniature cream cups to build a replica of "Castle Destro." As Annie started loading up the fifth tray, Shingle caught her by the elbow.

"I think your greenies have got things well in hand," Shingle said reassuringly. Annie knew that he would probably recognize it if they did: Shingle claimed to have been a chef in civilian life, even if his official designation still made him a grenadier, and his was certainly the most professional of the attitudes in the kitchen. "It's your first day; why don't you go out and join the serving staff for a bit?"

"But, sir-"Annie began reluctantly. "Cooks aren't supposed to leave their stations during-"

"Look, Short Stack. Think of it as the ounce of prevention that's worth a pound of cure."

Annie opened her mouth to cite the rules again, but another crash from the direction of Mutt—_Sergeant _Mutt, up to his elbows in dirty dishwater, his dog now lounging at his feet—made her think twice. If the health regulations and dress codes were already shot to hell, who was to say that the rule about station maintenance wasn't out the window too? "Yes, sir," she said resignedly, hefting the fifth tray of pancakes.

Orders were orders.

* * *

The chow hall was set up a bit like a college cafeteria. Military men and women jostled into line behind each other, holding out their trays for food or pulling them back when they didn't want any of that particular dish. The servers put each steel tray into a slot in the steam table, which would keep the food warm until the tray was empty—whereupon it would go back to the kitchen and become the concern of Sgt. Mutt. Annie pulled a pair of sterile gloves from the box by the door and put them on, gravitating as she did so towards the most undermanned of the stations. The serving staff let her join without question. She'd been introduced to them (albeit briefly) the day before, and if the new QM was out here in the first place, then she'd been cleared by the kitchen supervisor. Annie took the tongs, fixed her gaze firmly on her work, and began forking bacon onto every plate that was held out for it.

The first two went by without question, and she glimpsed legs in the by-now familiar Joe greens. The third pair of legs clearly belonged to a woman, the fourth to a stockier man in black; they were having a conversation in . . . French? Must be Intel. Five, six, seven, eight—bacon was popular this morning. The next two refused it, and the one after that asked for extra in a thick Chicago accent.

Then the twelfth plate appeared, and things got difficult.

The plate was normal, as far as Annie could tell. She reached into the tray with the tongs and flipped bacon onto the plate with the same motion she'd used God knows how many times in her career. But when the bacon completed its arc, the plate was no longer there, and the forlorn food landed back in the tray with a sad little crunching noise. The plate reappeared a second later, held just over the center of the tray.

Annie blinked, wondering just how tired that monster PT session had made her. "Sorry," she said, and reached into the tray again. This time, she could have sworn she saw it hit the plate, but once again bacon met bacon and somebody laughed.

Some smartass playing keepaway, huh? Annie told herself not to rise to the bait. In her experience, the kind of person who held up other peoples' breakfast would usually get his just desserts, and through no action of hers, either. She retrieved the bacon and, once again, aimed it at the plate. And the plate, once again, slid so neatly out of the way that it might not have been there in the first place.

Her eyes narrowed. "Look, you're holding up the line," she snapped, raising her eyes to the

owner of the offending plate. "Do you want bacon or not?"

Said owner was the slender Asian man she had spotted on PT earlier that morning. He was wearing a light gray tank top and sweat pants, but it was hard to tell under all the grime he was crusted in; from the look of things, he'd gone through at least three mud pits and a tunnel crawl, and topped off his invigorating early-morning workout by playing catch with open paint cans. Annie knew she wouldn't be grinning jauntily if she had a splotch of bright purple paint in her hair, but then, she wouldn't let a dog into the kitchen either.

"Two pieces," he said, holding out the plate again. Annie looked at it, then at him, and then back to it again. Rather than flipping the bacon, she took a firm hold on it with her tongs and placed it carefully on the plate. This time it didn't vanish.

"Tommy, stop teasing the greenie," a voice said. Another plate appeared, this one held by the red-haired woman who'd been chatting with Cinderella earlier. And on her other side was the masked man—and good God, he was loaded for bear, with knives strapped to all available limbs and a full bandolier. Annie was beginning to expect, if not to understand or accept, the casual violations of the regs she'd lived with for years . . . but honestly, that was a little much, wasn't it? Did he expect to have to fight a platoon on his way to the can?

"Then tell the greenie to stop throwing hot food around," Tommy retorted in an injured tone as he moved on to the next station, where the server on Annie's right began carefully scooping scrambled eggs onto his plate. "Someone could get _hurt_."

Annie ducked her head and endeavored to ignore everybody as she gave bacon to the redhead. It was not to be, however; the masked man had begun signing with his free hand, and that made the redhead snort back an undignified laugh.

"If only," she said. "And by the way," she added as she pulled her plate back. Annie realized with a start that she was being addressed. "don't let Storm Shadow ruffle your feathers. He's a jerk just on principle." Having settled that to her satisfaction, she moved on. Annie was left facing a frightening masked man, draped with enough weaponry to conquer a small nation, who held out his plate and indicated in dumb show that he would like three pieces of bacon, preferably crispy. Or at least, that's what she thought, given that he shook his head every time she proffered a piece that wasn't at least partially charred.

It was hard, Annie reflected, to be afraid of someone whose taste buds were so damaged that he preferred his bacon in carboniferous form. But the way "Tommy" had moved that plate . . .

Ninjas.

Right.


	4. Taking a Spill

**Author's Note:** Hmmm. Apparently, Snake-Eyes' bacon preference made a bit of an impression. All I can say in Annie's defense is that she likes it still chewy, and good luck getting her to change her mind.

I'm sorry this latest update took so long—the Christmas holidays, especially when one is spending them at home with two large military brothers, tend to be a bit hectic. On the other hand, I managed to grill them for a lot of information on life in the Army and USMC, which was very handy.

Regarding the business of greenshirts and names: it's never really explained in the series how or when people get their code names. The system I envisioned here was that greenies, who might still wash out, don't get official registered code names until they officially join the Joes. Short Stack, who's on permanent assignment and is maintenance rather than combat, received one pretty quickly since she's assuming her duties immediately despite being a greenshirt. The ones who might still be washed out have to make do with the nicknames they're given by higher-ups. And, as my brothers rather graphically informed me, nicknames tend not to be complimentary. In the interests of keeping this at a reasonable rating, though, I've tried to tone that down.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

**Edited to add**: At the request of some of my reviewers, I've expanded the greenshirt hand-to-hand scene slightly to explain what happens when you put a quartermaster up against a ninja.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Taking a Spill**

Annie was still turning the morning's encounters over in her mind as she joined the rest of the staff for post-breakfast cleanup. Beach Head, redhead, Cinderella, Tommy, walking arsenal . . . much as she would have liked to continue convincing herself that everything was normal, doing so didn't seem to be an option any more. The weapons out of the armory had to be the final straw. Annie could either allow herself to believe that this was indeed a commando unit for insane people—or try to understand that this was a unit where the little rules simply didn't apply. The latter frightened Annie more than she was willing to admit. If the little rules didn't apply, then how was she supposed to order her schedule? How was she supposed to know what to do? But more importantly, _why _didn't they apply?

It had been Annie's experience that when people stopped caring about the small stuff, it was often because there was bigger stuff to worry about. And if some crazy masked man was walking around with a belt of knives, that stuff must be a hell of a lot bigger than Annie had anticipated.

She took a deep breath as she pulled the last of the steel trays off the steam tables. Fretting won't help, she told herself sternly for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. Work to do. You have beginning hand-to-hand in half an hour, and you have to check on the KP sergeant, he's in your group technically—and what the hell is that in the bottom of the tray, anyway?

Squinting, Annie reached in and pulled out a bullet. It gleamed brightly, despite the residual grease from thirty pounds of cooked sausage. She shook her head, somehow not surprised at all, and tucked it into the pocket of her BDUs.

The kitchen was bustling just as much now, although the tone of the work had changed. With the breakfast rush over, cooks and greenshirts were talking freely, chattering until the walls of the kitchen echoed. Annie tried to ignore the din as she carried the last of the trays over to the sink.

There, soaped almost to the shoulders and no longer wearing his helmet or muzzle, Sgt. Mutt looked much calmer, or less angry, anyway. He also turned out to have a pencil-thin mustache, which almost made Annie laugh until she caught the look in his eye. She turned the laugh into a cough instead. It was one of those things that shouldn't be funny until you thought about it—the fact that the mustache made him look as if his name was Uncle Frank, or maybe Uncle Steve, and he was the sort of uncle your parents never really wanted to explain about.

Pencil mustaches, preferences for crispy bacon, acting like an asshole and playing keepaway with the plate. These were all human things, and as a rule, not signs of insanity. (Although the jury was still out regarding the bacon.) Junkyard brushed by her legs, generously shedding dark fur onto her freshly laundered BDUs, and Annie was reminded again of the whole rules-not-applying business, and the train of thought that followed. She pushed that away and focused on the dishwashing, which was considerable.

When she next checked her watch, she realized she had only six minutes to get to her first hand-to-hand class. Dropping her dish cloth, she cursed and ran for the door, passing a quick word of explanation ("Gottagohandtohand!") to Murphy as she went out. Murphy didn't raise an eyebrow at that, nor did the rest of the kitchen staff.

(In fact, they started quietly placing bets. Quartermaster or not, Short Stack was a greenshirt, and watching greenshirt reactions to their first hand-to-hand session was a popular form of entertainment. Though he wasn't part of the kitchen staff, Mutt was graciously allowed to put fifty bucks on a classic stagger-and-collapse-with-added-swearing.)

The mess hall and kitchens were in the Pit proper, on the second level below the subterranean motor pool. The training area, however, was on one of the uppermost levels, and Annie knew she had better run like hell if she was planning to make it in time. She pelted down the corridor, narrowly dodging an ordinance man carrying a stack full of files, and made for the elevators: there was no possible way she could run all those stairs in time. In accordance with what Annie liked to think of as the Universal Law of Bad Shit Happening, the elevators were packed, and the seconds ticked off as the car rose agonizingly slowly.

At least she wasn't the only one worrying about being late. As she sprinted down the corridor towards the broad set of doors, she found herself inadvertantly falling in with about a dozen other greenshirts, most of whom were in identical states of panic. She recognized Spit-Shine from that morning, looking considerably less put-together than he had been before; his BDUs were rumpled, and there were large damp spots where he'd clearly been scrubbing the clayey mud of the greenshirt obstacle course out of them. Annie met his eyes for a moment, noting the beginnings of a shiner around one of them. _Obstacle number seven: the swinging beam, _Annie thought. Either that, or obstacle number one: the instructor.

The greenshirts, about twenty of them, streamed through the doors and onto a broad, brightly-lit training floor. It didn't look like any other hand-to-hand instruction area Annie had ever seen. During boot camp, she and the eighty-five other recruits in 4327 platoon had been herded outside onto a woodchip-strewn lot—just like a playground, she'd thought at the time—and been shouted through the basics of strikes, blocks, and falls by a large number of surprisingly short men who were often just waiting for someone to look at them funny so they could use the unlucky bastard to demonstrate on. This looked more like a jazzercise class, with one long wall covered in mirrored glass and most of the floor padded with crash mats. The greenshirts, many of whom already carried the marks from an early morning spent under Beach Head's tender care, were nervously lining up and standing to attention as a preemptive measure. If the hand-to-hand instructor was anything like Beach Head, then nobody wanted to give him any excuse to get angry.

But when the door opened again, a rustle went through the ranks. The first person through was a slender woman with long red hair tied back in a ponytail—the same woman, in fact, who'd gone through the mess line not an hour earlier. Following her were two men, built tall and lean. One was Mister Crispy Bacon himself, carrying significantly less weaponry but still not saying a word, and the other . . . the other was also wearing a mask. That didn't mean she didn't recognize him: his hands were familiar, and they'd recently been attached to a very elusive and increasingly annoying plate.

The bacon-eating walking weapon man turned. His eyes were still covered, but the visor moved as his gaze tracked over the line of greenshirts. It didn't pause on Annie, but she got the feeling that he remembered her. He stood like a man who remembered _everybody, _possibly so he could go back and assassinate them later.

"My name is Scarlett," the redhead said calmly. Annie heard a stifled cough from the ranks. It sounded, in fact, a lot like the same cough she'd used to cover her laugh at the Muttstache. "Until you graduate greenshirt status, however, you'll call me sergeant and sergeant only. These-" and she turned to the two masked men "-are Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes. Snake-Eyes will be your primary instructor for most of this course, although Storm Shadow and I will alternate days assisting according to the schedule. That schedule has been posted, and I suggest you read it."

_Snake-Eyes _and _Storm Shadow? _Annie didn't turn her head, but she mentally ran down the ranks of the greenshirts. Among her fellow greenies were people named Bad Touch, Bluto, Popov, and Mothra, all of them victims of what Eighty-Six said was a pretty involved system involving giving highly successful Joes greenshirt-naming privileges. It was something she herself had only escaped by having a predetermined assignment instead of an open contract. When, she wondered, did people get the impressive names like Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow? Were there box tops you had to collect?

"Snake-Eyes doesn't speak. He communicates in ASL." Scarlett's voice was brisk, as if she'd run through this speech a thousand times—and she probably had, considering how many full-fledged Joes there were around the base. "In class, either I or Storm Shadow will be on hand to translate for him. Most of the senior Joes on base known ASL as well. However, all infiltration and infantry personnel are advised to learn it.

"You will address Snake-Eyes as sensei and Storm Shadow as sir. Both of them are ninjas." She paused for a moment as, despite the group being at attention, a few whispers broke from the ranks. Her voice took on a dry tone as she continued, no doubt anticipating questions before they could be asked. "No, that is not an exaggeration or a misnomer. No, they don't turn invisible, fly, or transform into things. However, they can and will annihilate an opponent, and possibly teach you to do the same. But that requires respect on your part. If you're not willing to work hard, knuckle under, and stay quiet, then you might as well wash out right now. You know where the door is."

When nobody took the offer to wash out, Scarlett glanced up and down the line. "All right. First row, come with me. Second row, go with Storm Shadow. We'll be evaluating your one-on-one combat skills."

Annie had unwisely chosen the second row, hoping to stay out of sight. Well, so much for that bright idea. Scarlett and Storm Shadow neatly split the group in half, like sheepdogs rounding up a number of confused and close-shaven sheep, and the two halves moved to opposite sides of the training area. Snake-Eyes stood in the center, almost unmoving, but Annie could see his head turning as he watched first one group and then the other.

In addition to Spit-Shine, Annie was sharing a group with Blackout, Shark Bait, Sixty-Forty, Stooge, Mothra, Zipline, Gaijin, and Rabbi Lee. Storm Shadow's masked face twitched a little as he read off the names—especially that second-to-last one, for some reason—but if he was planning on laughing, he didn't seem about to do it right away.

"Shark Bait," he said, picking one apparently at random. "You're going to attack me. The rest of you, form a circle. We're going to do a bit of demonstrating."

He seemed to enjoy that last word a little too much.

Shark Bait, apparently seeing no other option, lunged for Storm Shadow. Judging by the tattoos on his exposed forearms and the unusual gait, he was a Navy man, probably no great shakes at hand-to-hand anyway. This was some comfort to the rest of the greenshirts when the air blurred, Shark Bait found himself clutching at something that wasn't there, two sharp _thwacks _accompanied his collapse as his knees abruptly gave out, and he collapsed to the mat with a yelp like a chihuahua that'd been stepped on. As Annie tried to focus, Storm Shadow . . . well, there wasn't another word for it . . . reappeared. His grin was obvious even through the mask, the bastard.

"Nice job," he said. There should be some kind of rule against the amount of sarcasm he crammed into those two words. "Stay there for a moment, 'Bait, I want everyone to see this. See how he landed? Those spread arms are characteristic of someone unprepared for a sharp forward collapse. He was overconfident and attacked without considering the possibility of a dodge. Notice his chin, too: he was lucky he fell to his knees first, or his jaw would've hit the mat hard enough for him to break a tooth." He turned back to the group and crossed his arms. "So, what lesson can we take away from this? Mothra?"

The man who answered to Mothra was tall and skinny, but there was no visible reason for his nickname. Probably a victim of some senior Joe with a random sense of humor.

"Be prepared, sir!" he answered promptly and crisply. A couple of heads turned. Annie could already see people mentally renaming him Boy Scout.

"Wrong. The lesson here is 'don't be stupid.' Being prepared is being not stupid, but stupidity covers a lot of things, and not doing any of them is the first rule of the dojo. If he hadn't started off by doing something idiotic, then I might've given him a chance to let him touch me." Storm Shadow turned back to the prone Shark Bait. "You can get up now, 'Bait. And don't be stupid in future. Understand?"

"Yessir," Shark Bait muttered, clambering painfully to his feet. Storm Shadow turned back to the group with another grin showing clear through the mask, damn him.

"All right . . . Mothra, since you're so keen, it's your turn next. Attack me."

* * *

Mothra, Zipline, and Sixty-Forty all went, with varying degrees of success. Mothra's keenness seemingly applied to his speed as well; Storm Shadow seemed to approve of this, because he gave Mothra three clear openings, two of which the lanky greenshirt spotted and went for. (Not that he actually managed to land anything.) He wound up on the mat, too, but in a slightly less humiliating position than Shark Bait, and Storm Shadow confined his remarks to a few mild insults before letting him up again.

Zipline was apparently one of the few who'd come into the Joes with a nickname already attached. Annie had heard him mentioned in the kitchen as an expert in guerrilla warfare over mountain terrain, and from his cocky stance and casual amble as he strolled across the mats toward Storm Shadow, he seemed to think he'd have relatively little trouble. After the ninja (Annie had to get used to thinking that word) knocked him off his feet twice in three seconds, Zipline changed his tactics, staying low to the ground and trying to foul Storm Shadow's footing. It didn't work, and the class winced in sympathy when a tabi-clad foot knocked the wind out of him.

Then came Sixty-Forty, and it turned out he had been well-named. He was a gambler, trying pretty much anything in hope of a payoff—in this case, attempting to land a crotch kick on a ninja. The thud his body made on the mat was so loud that, across the training area, the other group stopped what they were doing to look. Snake-Eyes, who had been watching Scarlett's group, shook his head and walked over to stand next to Storm Shadow instead. As Stooge was waved out of the line by Storm Shadow, the mute ninja signed something to the other. Storm Shadow responded with an illustrative gesture explaining just what Sixty-Forty had tried to do.

To the surprise of everyone, the silent, black-masked, highly intimidating commando slapped one hand against his forehead, clearly unable to believe that anyone could do anything so _stupid. _It was almost funny in a way, but nobody was laughing. He turned to the group and signed.

"Snake-Eyes," Storm Shadow translated, "says that if anybody is going to try to 'nut a ninja'—thank you for that turn of phrase, brother, I won't be able to get that out of my head all day—they should damn well be prepared to do it correctly. Was that a front kick or a muscle spasm?" He nudged Sixty-Forty with his foot. The greenshirt made a whimpering noise. "Get up. You're going to try that again."

It took a few moments for Sixty-Forty to clamber back to his feet; his face was greenish-gray, and he seemed not to quite believe what he was hearing. It was with extreme reluctance that he resumed his place on the training mat, facing Storm Shadow—who, incidentally, was no longer smiling under the mask. The ninja stood poised, totally relaxed, waiting for Sixty-Forty to make his move. Sixty-Forty didn't.

After about thirty seconds of staring each other down, Storm Shadow sighed. "I'm not going to twist your head off, you idiot. We're professional about things here. Nobody gets killed on _there you go, greenie!"_

Annie and the rest of the group watched in astonishment as Sixty-Forty, clearly hoping for the element of surprise, jumped forward and shot his foot towards the ninja's . . . ancestral stronghold. It was another fairly lame attempt at a front kick, with the gambling man leading with his knee. Storm Shadow caught the leg with contemptuous ease: his fingers flashed, pressing _here _and _here, _and suddenly Sixty was buckling as the nerve clusters in his leg sent a frantic SOS to his brain before shutting down. He tried to pitch backwards, but Storm Shadow still had a firm grasp on the offending leg, and one deft twist by the ninja left Sixty-Forty sprawled on the mat in an incredibly awkward position.

"You see?" Storm Shadow said. "In hand-to-hand, untrained fighters should never go directly for the obvious target. It's usually a trap. And as you can see, Snake-Eyes is now giving me a look, possibly annoyed by the fact that Sixty-Forty will not be able to walk for at least an hour. I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that pain is educational."

Watching the scene transpire, Annie recalled a saying that she had heard dozens of times since joining the Army. "The three most dangerous things you can hear in the military: a private saying 'I learned this in boot camp,' a second lieutenant saying 'based on my experience, and a warrant officer saying 'Hey, watch this.'" To that Annie now added a rider: "A ninja saying 'Hi.'"

Unfortunately, Annie didn't have long to reflect on that. Storm Shadow's eye was running over the line, and it was in a voice of insufferable confidence—that same voice that he had used when playing keepaway with the plate—that he called out "Short Stack!"

If he tried to humiliate her again, Annie vowed, she was putting bromide in his food.

"All right," the ninja said as Annie shuffled towards him. "Attack me."

Annie raised her fists and tried to conjure up everything she had learned in basic training. It wasn't that quartermasters weren't expected to fight—they deployed in combat zones, after all—but hand-to-hand wasn't usually a part of it. She had a vague memory of Master Sgt. "Munchkin from Hell" Ramirez shouting at her, or rather, up at her: "Do not get fancy! Do you hear me? This isn't a fucking wrestling match! You are not a fucking commando! You are not going to win any points for looking pretty while you die! _Now drop the attitude and lay a fucking punch on me or so help me God you are-"_

You are what? She couldn't remember. Storm Shadow was standing right there, staring at her through the gap in his white mask, an unreadable expression on his face. Annie clenched her fists and shifted into the foursquare fighting stance—left arm raised, right cocked in front of the face to protect it, knees bent. That, at least, she remembered.

There was a snicker from behind her, and Annie tried to clamp down hard on her nerves. Another one broke out, a sound that could only be described as a titter. Glancing back at Storm Shadow, Annie realized that she could read the ninja's expression a bit more clearly—and both his eyebrows were raised so high that they looked like they were making a break for his hairline.

"Is there a reason," Storm Shadow said slowly, "that you're humming 'Old MacDonald'?"

Oh, hell.

Annie's face turned bright red as she caught herself right in the middle of the E-I-E-I-goddamn-O. There was a reason why, despite being such a good shot, she'd never gone to sniper school. And that was that, when unduly terrified, she had a bad tendency to hum.

And it had to be Old MacDonald, didn't it?

Figuring her dignity was beyond repair, Annie gave up and launched herself at Storm Shadow. Something crashed into her stomach, the world gave a lurch and inverted, and Annie was flung up and over before landing hard on the mat, stars erupting in front of her eyes. Storm Shadow was kneeling on her back, both her arms hitched together and pulled up so high that she couldn't budge them an inch. Annie made a half-hearted wheeze and flopped on the mat, wondering vaguely if she could tap out with the toe of her boot.

"A distracted and humiliated enemy is an easy enemy," Storm Shadow narrated, absentmindedly giving her arm another yank. "All's fair in love and war, but contrary to popular belief, war is far more painful. Look for tells. An eyetwitch, an uneven stance, a nervous habit of humming nursery rhymes—and use that. Mock them shamelessly. Do anything to put them off-guard and _keep _them there. For example, I could point out right now that if I remember my kindergarten teacher correctly, old MacDonald did _not _in fact have a greenshirt on his farm. If he did, however, it would probably make a noise like the squawk you heard when she landed." Annie couldn't see his face, because her own was currently pressed into the mat, but the aura of smirkiness was absolutely impossible to miss.

_At least, _she thought glumly, _it wasn't 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.'_

* * *

It was later. More pain had happened.

The greenshirt hand-to-hand class disbanded quietly. There was no chatter, and certainly not much in the way of camaraderie. The sweat-streaked figures shuffled off the training floor in ones and twos, some nursing fresh bruises, all bone-tired, a couple mildly traumatized. Aside from Storm Shadow's small but worrying sadistic streak, the instructors didn't seem to hate or deliberately torment the greenshirts: on the contrary, they seemed to believe in what they were doing, because they expected everyone to be in top condition. And if they weren't in top condition, then those goddamn back-flipping silent-sneaking come-up-right-behind-you-and-scare-the-daylights-out-of-you-while-you-were-just-trying-to-practice-your-strikes _ninja _would make sure that they were. Or else.

Annie had not been transferred for her combat skills.

She was greeted with a sea of curious faces when she stumbled back into the kitchen. Whiskey Down paused, meat cleaver in hand, as Annie went straight to the door of the walk-in freezer and rested her head against the cold metal, breathing heavily.

"Well?" Chopper said finally. "Do you believe in ninjas yet?"

She considered that for a moment. The freezer door was so wonderfully cool, and her arms felt like they were about to fall off; answering a question was really not at the top of her priorities right then.

"I believe," she said finally, "that I should've joined the Air Force."

Annie's legs finally gave out, and she muttered an epithet as she pitched forward onto the floor. In the door of the kitchen, Mutt ceremoniously accepted his winnings.


	5. Customer Feedback

**Author's Note: **Chapter five, as promised. Once again, I'm sorry I'm taking so long on this; real life keeps intefering with my writing. I broke my ankle a few weeks ago, and in between that and hashing out the details of my publishing contract (I never knew the process was so bloody complicated!), it's been harder to focus on fanfiction. However, as I've said before, I _am _going to be continuing this. Slowly but surely.

This is a bit of a two-parter update—in addition to this new chapter, I've also expanded a part of the last chapter which dealt with Annie's first hand-to-hand session. Also, if you're bored, you can check my author profile for links to a few pictures I've drawn based on my (and others') fanfiction.

**Acknowledgments:** The idea of the ninjas escaping from the infirmary was obviously inspired by CrystalofEllinon and her hilarious stories about just that topic. Medical confinement is always a bitch (she said, glaring at her ankle cast), and it makes sense for the medical personnel to take increasingly desperate measures to keep their patients actually in bed.

Information on the treatment of and attitudes towards quartermasters in the Army, US Marines, and Air Force was provided by my older brothers bulletsponge and shrapnil77, and my fellow member of the Why God Why? board, Penguin. Penguin also graciously provided me with some of the insults that the Air Force likes to aim at the other branches. Thanks, guys.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Customer Feedback**

In five years of quartermastering, Annie Gorshin had become acquainted with one undeniable fact: support personnel get treated like crap.

There always was, of course, a certain amount of healthy competition between the various branches of the military. The Navy tended to refer to the USMC as "jarheads" or "Uncle Sam's Mentally Challenged," while the Marines stuck to "squids" and various unprintable, unpolitically-correct phrases. Barracks wits all across the world liked to point out that, spelled backwards, "US Army" could stand for "Yes, my retarded ass signed up." Nobody liked the so-called Chair Force, because as the saying went, "their PT is from the barracks to the chow hall." The Air Force would respond in kind: "Marine: Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential." Nobody liked anybody else. If you believed barracks rumor, everyone in the Army was just too dumb to join the Marines, and the Coast Guard had a minimum height requirement so they could walk home in case their ships sank. The tradition of inter-branch rivalry was cheerfully abusive, and although it could sometimes get out of hand, they would all work together when they had to.

For the most part, though, the branches were united only in their disdain for their support personnel. This boiled down to one simple reason: QMs and desk jockeys didn't get shot at.

Before signing up, Annie had done her research, pawing through volumes of military memoirs and books on the famous battles in U.S. history. She remembered Army cartoonist Bill Mauldin talking with contempt about "garritroopers," men on the World War II Italian front who were "too far forward to wear ties and too far back to get shot." Support personnel were the rear echelon, the people who pushed papers instead of battle lines. Quartermasters were there to count socks and office supplies. Cooks were there to produce unmentionable messes that passed for food. They weren't _real _soldiers.

It was actually a relief, in the couple of days following her first tumultuous hand-to-hand session, to find that in that respect the Joes were still a bit like the regular military. Granted, there was none of the open contempt that she had sometimes encountered. But between being a greenshirt, a QM, a cook, and on permanent assignment to the Pit, Annie was not exactly a figure of consequence. And that, too, was a relief. She would accept that there were damn . . . _ninjas_ . . . on the base, and maybe that General Hawk wasn't quite as cracked as she'd previously thought, but the whole place was still crazier than she liked and the ability to fade into the background was very useful.

Oh, there were still problems. Take Clutch, for example.

Clutch was a good guy, a motor-pool jockey of the first order and a demon driver. He also seemed to have a regular sideline in pranking greenshirts, especially the kind that had funny names. On the afternoon following that first, painful hand-to-hand session, Annie was passing the motor pool when Clutch called to her.

"Hey, greenie!" he called out. There were no other greenshirts around, and Annie stopped, turning to face him.

"Yes, sergeant?"

"Everybody's busy, and we need some equipment forms. Go down to Ordinance and ask them for a stack of 3542s, okay?"

Annie nodded, not letting her expression show anything. She walked to the staircase, closed the door behind her, waited a moment, and then pressed her ear against the door. The motor pool guys were laughing their asses off: from the sound of it, Clutch was having trouble breathing. Hidden behind the door, Annie grinned.

Maybe quartermasters weren't in the line of fire, but they knew the operation of the base inside and out. Getting stacked meant having horrible and humiliating things happen to you, like being ziptied and hung from the rafters on your birthday. 3542 wasn't a form number, but the MOS of the second-most-senior ordinance man, whom Annie had met her first day on base and whose callsign was Bad Dog for a reason. Making a greenie go to Ordinance and ask for a stack of 3542s would be funny, but only for the people that weren't doing the asking.

"Nice try, sergeant," she muttered to herself. Then she went down to the ordinance shop to tell Bad Dog that Clutch had tried to drag him into a stupid prank.

She hoped Clutch could drive really, _really _fast.

In response to the general they're-there-but-they-don't-really-count attitude of the grunts, the support personnel had formed their own network of allies within the Pit. The plumbing guys talked to Electrical, who talked to Custodial, and Custodial talked to _everyone. _Nobody ever outright said as such, but Annie soon learned that the kitchen was the hub of the information hotline: there was always a reason for a maintenance man to be there, and of course, a full Joe or two might accidentally drop useful information while on KP. Support personnel were everywhere, they saw everything, and they talked to each other. It compensated for some of the nastier parts of the support-versus-combat rivalry.

Unfortunately, said rivalry proved to be one of the few normal things around the place. On Annie's second day in the kitchen, she was part of a small group cleaning out the last of the dinner trays (and finding _another _bullet, this time swilling around in the gravy from that evening's country-fried steak; what was wrong with these people?) when, after making a trip to the storage closet for more soap, she turned around to find Snake-Eyes right behind her.

"Christ!" she said involuntarily, dropping the gallon jug of dish soap. The air blurred, and Snake-Eyes caught it before it hit the ground.

She couldn't speak sign, but his slow and careful gestures indicated that she shouldn't worry; he was just passing through. Annie watched, not quite certain what was going on, as the commando boosted himself up onto one of the long counters and began to fish around on top of a cupboard.

" . . . can I help you, uh, sir?" she said finally. Sir? Sergeant? Sensei? They weren't in the dojo, and Whiskey Down had said the ninja's rank was classified. If she'd got the mode of address wrong, though, it didn't seem to bother Snake-Eyes: he waved her off and leapt down from the counter a second later, carrying a small package wrapped in yellow-white rice paper.

The only other cook in the kitchen was S.O.S., who as the second most junior QM now shared washing-up duty with Short Stack. He was of a notably nervous disposition, but didn't bat an eye when he closed the huge dishwasher and turned to see Snake-Eyes signing vigorously at a mystified Annie. The ninja wanted something—he was repeating a sign over and over, but this one was a little more obscure than the simple shrug of "don't mind me." The hand gesture looked a bit like a one-eared elephant, though Annie guessed that that wasn't what he was after.

Probably.

"Teapot, sir?" S.O.S. called out. "Got it right here." He turned back to the counter and retrieved a small item wrapped in cloth. Snake-Eyes cocked his head inquisitively, and S.O.S. shook his head. "Hand-washed, sir. None of us would dream of putting this through the dishwasher. Not with that glaze on it."

The ninja accepted the teapot with a nod of thanks and vanished again, as silently as he had appeared.

"What-" Annie began.

"It's a ninja thing," S.O.S. said, mopping his damp hands on a dish towel.. "They've got kitchenettes and break rooms on the lower levels, but after Leatherneck went rooting through the cupboards for Tom Collins mix and accidentally smashed an antique tea cup, all the ninjas keep their pots and things down here. Makes everyone happier."

"And the thing on top of the cupboards?"

"Tea."

"Why'd he put it up there?"

"Someone might steal it."

"Who would steal tea?"

"Storm Shadow, Scarlett . . . pretty much anybody. It's a competition thing."

"Why?"

S.O.S. gave her a look of exasperation. If it weren't for the forty-year difference, it would've been an identical copy of Whiskey Down's.

"Ninja," he said.

Annie was beginning to loathe that word.

There were always certain words and phrases which carried particular intimations in the regular military. "Sir," for example, only applied to officers—that is, anybody on the level of warrant officer or higher. If you were an E3, like Annie, the phrase to mind was "Hey you," because that was pretty much all anyone would call you. But in the Pit, "ninja" seemed to be a Get Out of Jail Free card for perpetrating weird shit, because . . . well, because you were a ninja.

"Medical leave" was another one. Joes felt about medical leave the way vampires felt about artificial tanning: sure, it wouldn't kill them, but what was the _point?_ Unless the Joe in question was actively oozing blood and/or had been ordered to stay put by a significant senior officer, medical leave just wasn't in the cards.

And that was another interesting aspect of Pit life—one that Annie was introduced to on the same day after she and S.O.S. had the abrupt encounter with Snake-Eyes in the kitchen. Namely, the fact that while medical personnel were much higher up than quartermasters in rank both and the estimation of the troops, they were often got exactly the same amount of serious attention paid to them.

Annie had seen this firsthand, too. When she'd come on duty for the dinner shift, she'd been ordered by Murphy to leave off grilling the bratwurst: instead, as the most junior cook, she was now being handed "bucket duty." She would get to see the infirmary up close.

Bucket duty was the preparation of special meals for the heavily incapacitated Joes who were staying in the infirmary, and it was a junk assignment. Every time a Joe was sent into the infirmary, the chief medical officer (whatever his name was; the forms were just signed "Doc") would send instructions to the kitchen regarding what they could and couldn't eat, usually as a result of whatever cocktail of medications they were on. The resulting meals had to be very carefully prepared, and were often ludicrously bland despite the cooks' best efforts. This resulted in said cooks getting shit from patients who sure as hell didn't want to be eating thin soup when they were feeling like they'd been run over by a truck, and often had been.

And it was called bucket duty for a reason. Patients feeling the aftereffects of anesthesia might not be able to keep a meal down, and it tended to—as Chopper put it—"make you think twice about recycling, if you know what I mean."

Whenever Roadblock was in the kitchen, he took over bucket duty with an aplomb that made the rest of the cooks forget that it was a lousy job. But that was Roadblock for you: he was the only person who could make bucket chow taste good. Perhaps there was some ancient art of Roadblock-Fu that taught you how to season a dish without actually using any spices. Annie, however, would have to make bland food from the standard recipe and take the bitching from the infirmary cases.

Murphy handed her the list. There were three Joes currently on bed rest in the infirmary: Dusty, Snow Job, and Spirit. Two were on the kind of heavy painkillers that made them good for pretty much nothing; they'd reached the point where they were off IV and could take semisolid food again, but it was possible that they would be demonstrating why bucket duty had the name it did. The third was apparently under observation for a concussion, and could be given the same thing everyone else was getting. With that in mind, Annie got to work.

Soup, mashed potatoes, orange juice. Vanilla pudding for afterwards. Bland, wholesome, inoffensive, and not too hard to throw up. Annie filled the containers, put lids on everything to prevent spilling, and co-opted a wheeled cart to get everything down to the Infirmary. She went through the motions on automatic pilot: after only a few days in the kitchen, she'd begun to get used to the routine, and didn't expect any surprises. Nobody even looked at her twice as she trundled the cart down the hall towards the elevators.

At first glance, the infirmary was just like every other infirmary she'd ever seen, albeit bigger than usual. It felt both soothing and professional: this was a place where injured men and women came to get better, doubtless attended by the most expert personnel. The walls were painted a soft yellow, and the privacy screens set up between each bed were covered in dappled blue fabric that was probably very soothing to someone with a sick headache. To her left was the head doctor's office, and further down were the double doors that led to intensive care and the OR. Boilerplate infirmary. It wasn't until she looked carefully that she realized there was something slightly . . . off . . . about the whole thing. She didn't know what, but it nagged at her.

"Dinner?" a soft voice said. Annie jumped a little, making the cart rattle, but the man now emerging from the side office didn't seem to warrant the alarm. He was of medium height and slender, with thick-rimmed glasses, a slightly unruly thatch of hair, and a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve. There was a faint tan line around his eyes that didn't quite match the shape of the glasses—he probably wore goggles when he was on a mission. _Field medic, _Annie thought.

"Um, yes, sergeant," she said articulately, and fumbled for the paper she had been given. "I've got the normal meal for, uh, Dusty, and painkiller rations for Snow Job and Spirit."

"They're down at the end of the ward," the field medic said, inclining his head towards a cluster of privacy screens by the back wall. Annie nodded to him and glanced around again as she lifted one of the trays off the cart, wondering what it was that was bothering her so much. Yellow walls? Nah. There wasn't anything unusual about that. The machines weren't making any noise.

"It's the ceiling," the medic said amusedly. Annie jumped again and almost dropped the tray, then gave him a quizzical look. "You've got that look," he clarified. "Every time a greenshirt comes in here for the first time, they can never quite understand what's different about this place. Look up at the ceiling."

Annie did so. It took one look, and then another, before she realized what the problem was. What she'd taken for a delicate pattern of interlocking squares was actually a metal grid, painted white and bolted into place over ceiling tiles of the same color. She shot a curious glance at the field medic, who laughed softly.

"Ninja," he said.

For a moment, Annie thought she was hearing echoes.

"They were getting out," he clarified. "No Joe likes bedrest, but ninjas are impossible. They were actually lifting up the ceiling tiles and escaping into the vents. Now the only way they can get out is to smuggle a blowtorch in with their gear, and I'm pretty sure even Snake-Eyes can't do that." He grinned a little, totally at ease with the fact that he was yet _another _person in this insane base who was cheerfully reordering his life around a group of lunatic masked commandos. Annie had stopped rolling her eyes at the word "ninja," but it would take more than a couple of days for her to get used to flagrant flouting of every military regulation in the book. She wondered, for the thousandth time, just how effective G.I. Joe had to be for this much weirdness to be tolerated.

Then, against all odds, she caught herself smiling. A laugh bubbled up inside her, the first since she'd been transferred to this loony bin, and she let it out. Annie's laugh wasn't exactly dignified—a hoarse cackle with a snort at the end—but it felt good to laugh about _something. _The field medic shook his head a little as she put the tray down on the cart and, quite frankly, giggled.

"I'm sorry, sergeant," she said, catching her breath and tried to maintain a hold on her professionalism. _Yeah, good luck with that, Annie. _"I'll carry on, sergeant."

How exactly did you explain to a full Joe what a relief it was to learn that there were other people who got just as little deference as the quartermasters did? Desperate enough to keep their patients in bed that they actually bolted a grate to the _ceiling . . . _oh God, she was going to start laughing again. She ducked her head over the cart and gave it a push, trying not to make eye contact with the field medic in case her sense of humor got her written up.

She had regained her composure by the time she reached the end of the ward. The three beds at the end had had the screens between them removed, probably so the men in them could talk freely; instead, the screens had been moved to surround all three of them, blocking the lines of sight and creating what looked to Annie like a defensible position.

Two of the men were bantering freely, calling insults and bad jokes between the beds at each other and occasionally punctuating a remark with a raised middle finger. The fact that they were both on the ends, and that the man between them appeared to be meditating, bothered them not a whit. When Annie moved a screen and peered into their enclosure, though, they stopped immediately and looked up. The meditating man, an Indian by his color, opened one eye.

"Chow," Annie said briefly and began to shift a few more of the screens.

"_Bucket_ chow," clarified the most-battered of the three, a red-bearded giant with an IV in his arm and a plaster leg splint that went clear up to the thigh. "Now I wish that Viper had finished the job."

A piece of wadded paper bounced off his head, courtesy of the blonde man on the other side of the Indian. "What're you complaining about? I've been lost out in the desert for days—no food, no water but what you can gather from the plants and no navigating except by the stars. You ought to be grateful for what you're getting."

That would be Dusty, then—the desert trooper. And given a choice between the remaining two names, she would hazard a guess that the red-bearded man was Snow Job. He sure didn't _look _like a Spirit.

"'Lost' in the desert?" Snow Job said quickly, grinning.

"Well, lost by _your _standards," Dusty responded. "Navigating the desert is more art than science. Especially since when I'm at work, I can't just pick water up off the ground—not like some second-rate troopers I could mention."

Snow Job scoffed as Annie put down the last of the screens and began to unload the cart. "You freeze your balls off at sixty Fahrenheit, and you're talking to me about second-rate? No, scratch that, you _deliberately pissed off Beach Head_ to pulled out of winter ground-combat training, and . . . never mind. It's not worth arguing about." He shook his head sadly. "Some guys just don't have what it takes."

"Spirit, tell this guy to lay off," Dusty said. "I think he's jealous." Spirit proceeded to ignore both of them.

Snow Job responded with a creative gesture that Annie had never seen before but was definitely worth remembering. (And she'd thought she was putting off her education by joining the Army . . . ) She finished loading the first of the trays and moved around to the far side of Snow Job's bed, depositing the food on the telescoping metal table that bed-bound patients used to eat off of. The red-bearded man grimaced as she pushed the little table up against the side of his bed, and for a moment, his face was greenish-white under the beard. Annie wondered if she should jump back out of the splatter zone—but no, he wasn't going to yurk up. This time, anyway.

Spirit seemed totally unconcerned with the fact that he, too, was getting the blandest possible foods. Dusty, on the other hand, practically smirked when Annie put down the tray with his dinner, and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in covering his food with as much salt and pepper as humanly possible. Snow Job grimaced again and stared at his vanilla pudding mournfully.

"Anything else I can get you?" Annie said. It was an automatic question, honed by years of waitressing, but two of the injured troopers seemed to take it as a suggestion.

"Some real food."

"Another pillow."

"And I do mean real food. Not vaguely flavored food substitute. I've eaten MREs that looked better than this."

"Oh, and Lifeline. He's the one who put me in the bed by the Eskimo."

Spirit cracked one eye open. "A gun with two bullets and a transfer to North Korea."

"I'll . . . I'll get right on that," Annie began. She shifted the cart and hastily began shoving the privacy screens back into place. Snow Job and Dusty barely seemed to notice that she was leaving; they were back to insulting each other, this time through mouthfuls of food. To her surprise, Spirit flashed her a quick, wry grin as she pulled the screens closed. And then the tiny asylum was cordoned off again, and Annie was pushing the cart back down the long ward.

The field medic nodded to her as she left. For the first time, Annie noticed something else—his sleeves were rolled up, and there were bruises on his forearms. The exact same kind of bruises she'd had after being pounded into the mat by Storm Shadow for what felt like the length of an opera.

It was with a considerably lighter heart that she pushed the cart back to the kitchen. Even if you're at the bottom of the scale of deference, it's nice to know that there are people not too far above you.


	6. Snack Break

**Author's Note:** It arises from the dead, yet again. Sadly, my laptop cannot say the same; its temporary system failure just lost most of the next chapter I had planned. So as a buffer/bonus in the meantime, here's a typical day for a Joe cook. Hope you like it!

And enjoy the respite, Annie. Next chapter, we move into Plot territory.

**Rating:** T

**Disclaimer:** GI Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

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**Snack Break**

The human capacity to adapt is absolutely incredible. That wasn't to say that PFC Annie Gorshin, now currently known as Short Stack, was actually getting used to her situation: after spending years as "PRIVATE!", learning to respond to and think of herself as "Short Stack" would take more than a few days in the company of the Joes. Nevertheless, she was learning to get on with things.

She couldn't help looking at the world of the Pit from a kitchen-crew point of view. She might have been infantry, and almost qualified for sniper school, but the kitchen was where she was at home. Grease jockeys would congregate in the motor pool, the PT course was Beach Head's personal territory, the pilots monopolized the roof on sunny days in order to watch the planes being tested, and the ninjas . . . Annie was worrying too much about the ninjas lately. They probably hung upside-down and recited Confucius until they learned how to attain enlightenment by punching someone's kidneys out through their nose. (Annie was still hazy on what culture ninjas came from, though she had a sneaking suspicion that it might not have been the one with the little orange-robed guys.) And the kitchen was where Annie felt at home.

It was a core of order amidst the chaos, and by clinging to that core, she slowly felt her life stabilize. By her third day on duty, she had a good handle on the routine:

**0515-0555:** PT. Spend most of the time getting shouted at. Exercises, followed by running laps and a try at the greenshirt PT course: newbies wouldn't be expected to defy physics quite just yet, and Beach Head was forced to settle for running them into the ground.

**0555-0610:** Designated shower time. Every member of the kitchen staff had to be cleaned up before they signed in, but Sergeant Major Shouty's love of mud pits and barbed wire meant that some days, the quartermasters did everything but run through a car wash to get the thick coating of muck off as quickly as possible.

**0610-0645:** Bully the KPs. Technically speaking, this meant "fixing breakfast," but it often boiled down to the same thing. The quartermasters were the cooks, and the non-quartermaster kitchen staff were there to act as their helpers, but soldiers on punishment detail got the dirtiest jobs the kitchen had to offer. Peeling potatoes was only the half of it. It was _amazing _how many things needed to be fixed, cleaned, drained, mopped up after, lugged around in fifty-pound bales, and on one memorable occasion, immolated.

Annie had decided, shortly after graduating from quartermaster training, that she should never rise higher than PFC. The reason was simple: she secretly enjoyed ordering around KPs far too much, and someone like that could never responsibly hold serious command. She had spent too many years as a waitress, and every waitress cherishes the fantasy of making those bitching, ass-pinching, no-tipping, "I don't understand why you don't have a vegetarian option, all the _good _restaurants have a vegetarian option" bastards _pay._

She had admitted this to Whiskey Down on her second day in the kitchen. His response? "Hitler was a vegetarian too." No wonder she liked the kitchen so much.

**0645-0830: **Breakfast rush. Annie would keep the pancakes and waffles coming, make sure the syrup jugs were topped up, and listen through the open door for any interesting tidbits of gossip. Apparently, the warrant officer was on the outs with somebody named "Lady J." Annie made a mental note: Joes 3, frat regs 0.

**0830-0915:** Cleanup time. Bully the KPs some more, especially since men who would cheerfully slog through miles of muddy battlefield with their own intestines hanging out still hated being stuck on dish duty. Supervise the cleanup of the fryers and the griddle, and be sure the grease traps were scrubbed out. Fish out the various things that people dropped in the steam trays: in addition to the usual bullet or two, Annie had found a wallet, two watches, a crumpled five-dollar bill, three betting tickets with "Ace" scrawled on them, and a tightly-folded magazine photo of a woman wearing a web belt and not much else.

**0915-1100:** Late for hand-to-hand! This was inevitable, since no matter how many helpers and KP monkeys there were, the amount of cleaning-up to do was always greater. She would skid in the door of the dojo and avoid meeting the eyes of Sgt. Scarlett, Sgt. Storm Shadow, or Sensei Bacon. This meant she would often find herself being used as a demonstration dummy by the ever-capable instructors. The calluses on her back and shoulders were coming along nicely.

**1100-1300:** Lunch rush. Quartermasters were always released early from the mandatory physical training sessions, something which did not endear the Joes and greenies who had to stay and suffer through the full course. Well, if they wanted to do their own cooking, then they could.

Lunch was where Chopper and Shingle really shone. Annie would have some autonomy at breakfast, but lunch wasn't her territory, and she would do as she was told ASAP. She would usually find herself at the long griddle, working on yet another few pounds of the truly ungodly amount of meat the base consumed every day. Many of the Joes were of a very straightforward disposition regarding food: I want it to taste good, and if it does, I want more.

**1300-1630:** Variable. As a greenshirt, Annie was still learning the ropes of the base, and different days would see her assigned to weapons drill, armory detail, or grunt work in various parts of the Pit. One day she found herself as part of a team that was helping to unload stacks of machine parts from a truck. She was as useful as she could be—not very, considering that her fellow detail members tended to be very large men—but got some satisfaction out of seeing that when Clutch's gear had been going through the laundry, there had been an "unexplained breakage" in one specific washing machine. Trifle not with the ways of ordinance men, for they are crafty and willing to make you wear shrunken pants.

**1630-1715:** Scramble for dinner. Joes who hadn't been able to get to lunch or breakfast—and there were more than a few—would have been living on granola bars all day, and consequently would not take kindly to a less than satiating meal. Annie would find herself flying from pillar to post (or more accurately, from fryer to salad bar), trying to keep on top of the hundred and thirty things that needed stewing, mashing, frying, freezing, defrosting, setting, rising, or pounding briskly with a meat tenderizer the size of an unabridged dictionary.

**1715-1945:** The mob descends to feed. Annie and S.O.S., the most junior quartermasters, were usually pressed into service as substitute station attendants. If the ninjas were playing keepaway, Annie would be too frustrated to notice it; cooking three squares for more than a hundred people, with PT, hand-to-hand and grunt work on top of it all, meant that by dinnertime her energy was beginning to run out and her temper fray.

It was on just such an occasion that a fellow greenshirt of Marine extraction, placed on KP duty for the mortal sin of attempting to be smart to his superiors, had decided to double up on the insubordination and crack wise at Annie's expense. Later on, Annie would mentally mark him down as the sort of person who was likely to wash out; maybe her authority was petty and her military specialty smelled like dish soap, but authority as authority. At the time, however, Annie had seen red. With a bark of "Semper fit your ass under that sink and check those pipes, KP boy! You're in _my _world now!", she had earned herself the new nickname of Control Freak and her own brand-new punishment assignment from the ranking quartermasters.

But damn, it had been worth it.

**1945-2100:** Cleanup and bunk time. Every smart quartermaster and greenshirt hit the rack as early as possible, knowing that they would be rustled out of bed at oh-fuck-thirty the next morning for another glorious run on Beach Head's latest monstrosity of a course. Annie would finish up in the kitchen, stow her gear for the night, and collapse gratefully onto her bunk, nursing a fresh compliment of aches and bruises.

Tomorrow, she would tell herself. Tomorrow, she would get the hang of this. Tomorrow, she would finally learn that block that Sgt. Scarlett was trying to pound into her head. Tomorrow, she would stop having a minor heart attack whenever a masked figure appeared out of nowhere. Tomorrow she would cook something so damn amazing that the grunts would stop complaining, the person who kept dropping bullets in the steam trays would finally 'fess up, she would get posted someplace more peaceful . . .

But even as sleep overcame her, a new thought would follow that last hope. No, she wouldn't get posted someplace else. Because that same part of Annie that was still a waitress knew the joys of quietly eavesdropping on strange people—the more bizarre, the better. And really, you couldn't get much stranger than the Pit.


	7. Raiding the Fridge

**Author's Note: **Chapter seven. I'm sorry that this one isn't very funny. When I started this story, my intention was that it would be strictly humorous, but the plot that wound up developing is taking a slightly different route from that. The whole point is to showcase the Joes from an unusual perspective, but that means acknowledging all the kinds of things that the Joes have to deal with, including the nasty parts. Don't worry—this should be probably the angstiest chapter in the whole thing.

**Rating:** T for language (and in this chapter, violence)

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Raiding the Fridge**

Annie was running on the track. Again. An Alabamese Rottweiler was behind her, yelping and growling through his green balaclava. She thought she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and it stank. She sucked in air and tried to speed up, but exhaustion had turned her muscles to jelly and she pitched forward onto the track.

The Rottweiler was on her in seconds—but Mutt was there, tugging on its leash and pulling it away from her. He was wearing his facemask and helmet, but there was a false beard stuck on over it. Annie stifled a laugh, and Mutt frowned, loosening his grip on the Rottweiler's leash. The dog barked and leapt for her again, drooling fiercely through the balaclava that was still haphazardly shoved on over its muzzle.

Something was wailing in the distance. Annie thought it sounded like a bit like an electric guitar, and Mutt appeared to agree: "I want my MTV," he observed, forcing the Rottweiler to heel.

Then the wailing intensified, the dream shattered, and Annie fell out of bed.

The bunkroom was mostly dark, but a glowing beam was flickering confusedly over the walls: flashlights, she realized belatedly. Eighty-Six was standing by her bunk with a Maglite in one hand, the light bobbing as she frantically tugged on one boot. The wailing sound was there too, but it sure wasn't a guitar solo. Annie resisted the urge to clamp her hands over her ears.

"Come on, get up!" Eighty-Six called. There was a thunder of feet in the corridor, and the door slammed open, revealing a Joe neither of them knew. Annie instinctively grabbed for her bedclothes before she remembered that she'd been sleeping in a tank top and shorts.

The Joe was carrying a flashlight as well: he'd clearly been on command-of-quarters duty. Annie guessed by the shrieking alarm that this wasn't routine, though, and his appearance confirmed it. Sweat dampened his white headband, and the strange red sash slung over one shoulder had a pair of nunchucks tucked into it.

"We're under attack," he said shortly. "Intruders on the first two levels. Move!"

Annie dropped the bedclothes and scrambled to her feet as best she could. All around her, the bunks were creaking as women tumbled out of them and grabbed the essentials they needed, falling into line and hurrying out the door towards their various assigned posts. She shoved her feet into her boots as she tried to think back on the briefings she'd been given.

If the Pit was under attack—and it was extremely unlikely, the commanding officers had said—there was no such thing as a quartermaster any more. All of the QMs reverted to their secondary specialties and fell in with the rest of the defensive corps. Eighty-Six, who'd had training as a medic, was already out the door; Annie knew she would be heading for the infirmary. But PFC Annie Gorshin was a qualified rifleman who'd narrowly missed making it into sniper school. She and the rest of the grunts would draw weapons from the armory and fan out to take up strategic defense points throughout the Pit. Enemies on the first two levels . . . she knotted her bootlaces haphazardly, grabbed her emergency bag from under her bunk, and dashed for the door. They had the training level and the motor pool. Probably heading for the war room. Her breath came fast as she raced down the corridor.

But enemies in the Pit? How did they even get in? General Hawk had said that those Cobra people knew where some of their installations were, including some of the multiple Pits that the team moved between, but security was thicker than Cross-Country's accent. A Cobra agent shouldn't have been able to get within firing distance of the Pit, let alone force a whole team of intruders past the motor pool.

Annie had been under fire before. She'd been posted on US bases in unfriendly territory—Guantanamo and Borovia came to mind—and cooked out of camps in Afghanistan where, despite the arms they were giving the _mujahideen, _nobody was ever really safe. But when the Pit was under attack, it was almost worse than that. It had an unreal quality that Borova couldn't top.

The emergency power had come on, bathing the corridors in their usual yellow-white fluorescent glow, but she was surrounded by other sleepy-eyed soldiers who were nevertheless ready to fight. A patrol rattled past, eight half-dressed privates with M16s, under the command of a glowering man that she dimly recognized as Sgt. Slaughter. Some, like Annie, were carrying emergency packs, and others had just donned riot gear. Their faces were drawn, their expressions serious, but something was bothering Annie about the scene and it took her a minute to realize what was wrong. Her fellow greenshirts were spooked, but the full Joes rattling past didn't seem scared: they seemed almost _confident._ Under attack by crazed terrorists, and they barely looked fazed. And in the Pit, with its tan carpeting and off-white walls . . . It was like being in a nice modern office complex while being invaded by robot soldiers in pajamas. None of it added up.

She fell in with the rest, though, drawing her equipment from the armory and heading for the snipers' designated rally point. Fast wasn't fast enough, though: by the time she arrived at the rally point, the group leader—a slender blonde man wearing night-vision goggles, whom Annie vaguely remembered as Low-Light—was quickly pairing them off.

"Two sharpshooters at every staircase access point," he was saying. Despite the commotion, he seemed as cool as a cucumber, and his voice was soft and calm. "You'll be reinforcing the posts there. Report to your posts for specific instructions, and remember to pick your targets." He turned to Annie, who was one of the last to join the group. "You're with Rabbi Lee. Third-floor stair junction, northeast side. There's already a group there. Move faster next time."

Nice and concise. It was almost as if they weren't under attack at all. Annie slung her M16A2 and pelted off after Rabbi Lee, who seemed entirely too eager to get shot at. He was part of the sniper class, and he carried a high-powered rifle instead of the M16, but he made up for the equipment change with twice as many sidearms as necessary. And was that a Bowie knife strapped to his belt?

Oh, right. He was a Marine. They were all insane anyway.

One step, then another. The junction was where the main corridor of the administrative level met the north-side emergency staircase—a good spot for people to break in, if they wanted to seriously cause trouble. Even if there was somebody already posted there, backup never hurt.

She shot a glance at Rabbi Lee, who was jogging along methodically with a determinedly calm expression on his face. That didn't do anything for her nerves: he'd probably been in a dozen firefights, and could afford to not get nervous. Hell, the whole _Pit _seemed cool as a cucumber. The only visibly panicky people Annie had seen had been her fellow greenshirts . . .

Sure, everyone did their best to keep calm. And it was expected that you kept your cool under fire, because freaking out would get someone killed. But there were ways to spot the fear that people were suppressing—a clenched muscle in the jaw, someone either too white or too red, that certain glint in the eye. It wasn't just the fear of death, but the fear of fucking up: of not doing your job, of getting someone else killed, of losing your shit and living with the knowledge of what you'd done. But she wasn't seeing much of it here.

When she'd arrived in the Pit only four days previously, she thought they were insane. Just half a minute ago, she'd thought they were confident. But as she watched the faces of the men that raced past in the corridors, hearing barked orders now mixed with dark jokes (and was that the snap of bubble gum she heard? Seriously?) she thought that maybe that wasn't quite right either. They were . . . competent. Frighteningly competent.

And maybe that thought scared her just a little more than anything else.

* * *

One corridor from their designated post, Rabbi Lee signaled for quiet. He slung his rifle, drew his Beretta, and checked the corner before giving the go-ahead. Annie followed him, keeping her M16 fixed at point and swinging to cover the corners and ducts just like the MOUT training had drilled into them.

There was a temporary barrier thrown up about twenty feet from the stairway, blocking the corridor and providing a clear shot at the stair door. Annie had wondered why all the desks in the Pit seemed to be made of reinforced steel, and now she knew: comfort, convenience, doesn't take a scratch, _and _provides impromptu defense in case of invasion. A greenshirt Annie didn't know was hunkered down behind the barrier, covering the door while Sgt. Scarlett helped another greenshirt tip one more desk on end a little farther away from the door. Papers were scattered across the floor, and the doors to the offices hung open, their carpets scarred and ragged where the desks had been dragged out.

"Cover us," Scarlett ordered tersely, and Annie and Rabbi Lee obeyed. Annie dropped into firing position, half-covered by the barrier. Rabbi Lee tried to move in front of Scarlett, putting himself between her and the door, but Scarlett jerked her head at him and he scurried to follow Annie's example. His face was bright red as he checked the safety on his rifle.

With the secondary barrier up, Scarlett ordered Rabbi Lee and one of the unknown greenshirts—an explosives specialist, by the looks of him—to man it. It was good strategy: staggered lines of defense, with the best sniper and the demo man behind the main defensive force so the enemy would concentrate on the grunts and get picked off by the secondary specialists. The problem was being one of the grunts. Annie sucked in a shallow breath and fought to keep herself from checking her M16 yet again. They assumed their positions and waited.

For a few moments, there was dead silence in the hall. Annie kept her eye trained on the door, weapon prepared, hands placed in the textbook fashion. For a moment, her fingers trembled on the metal, and she mentally ordered herself to stop. The sound of the others breathing seemed harsh in the enclosed corridor.

Five major posts in her quartermastering career. Afghanistan. Cuba. Germany. Korea. And a tiny, undermanned camp on the Austro-Borovian border. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong . . . and oddly enough, the answer was Germany. The most peaceful post she'd ever been on. Big solid military base, well-established, with nary a 'tac vest in sight and a kitchen that bought fresh produce from the markets in Heidelberg. Beautiful city. Nice architecture. Afghanistan . . . not so much. There'd been a couple of "accidents."

Tensions were always high, and there had been combat. The Borovian posting had more than made up for all the rest. But she _cooked, _for God's sake, not manned the barricades! She remembered watching the streak of shells across the sky—the rocket's red glare, one of the idiot kitchen helpers had said—as the Borovian military shelled a rebel outpost. The US troops had strict orders not to intervene. And when there was that strange incident with the captured commandos, the camp had pulled up stakes as a gesture of pacification. Annie had been in for five years, but she had never been in a position where she had had to pull the trigger on somebody. And now, when she'd spent so long getting angry at people for looking down on her for not being a real soldier, she was almost going to pieces at the thought of doing what a real soldier was supposed to do. Oh for Christ's sake, the irony was killing her.

Then, distantly, there was a muffled thumping noise. Scarlett, Annie, and the demoman ducked instinctively, recognizing the sound of an explosion. The quartermaster's hand was trembling again. Any minute now, she was going to start humming, and then humiliation would be added to the nervous terror.

Another explosion, this one closer. The fluorescent panels overhead shivered slightly as the shockwave moved through them, making the plastic panes flex. That one had been on the floor right above them. Annie bit her lip and refocused on the door.

She could hear more, now: a clatter of feet. Heavy boots pounding on the concrete stairs, creating a chorus of thumps and rattles that blended together as they echoed in the confined space of the staircase. Annie's hands slipped on the stock of her M16, and she clumsily swiped one palm against her BDU pants, trying to scrape the clammy sweat off it. Sgt. Scarlett was crouched only a few feet away, her eyes fixed on the door, but she too was giving off that freakish air of confidence and there wasn't any tension or whiteness in her grip.

Calm. Calm. Calm

For a moment, there was a heart-stopping silence. Somebody was behind the door at the end of the hall, but they didn't know if there was an ambush waiting for them, and they would be wondering what to do next. A few cautious footsteps echoed from the stairwell, with what sounded like metal-plated soles making clicking sounds. Whoever was behind that door was . . . uncertain. It would do. Annie took a deep breath, shot a final glance around for confirmation of her position, and tried to focus. She knew the drill: eyes forward, watch the tension in your arms, weapon braced but not locked, keep it loose for recoil. It had been a long time since Basic, but not that long. No spray-and-pray: short bursts, check your targets.

There was a crash, and the door caved in. Annie had a vague impression of color—purple and blue-green, like the world's ugliest Hawaiian shirt—before the corridor exploded in a thunder of gunfire. The blue-and-purple men were bringing their weapons to bear, but the Joes had been just waiting for them to break cover and they had the advantage.

Scarlett was quicker than Annie had thought possible. One shot. Two, three, four, aimed in a fraction of a moment. All of them hit the same target: the first of the purple men, who recoiled and fell with a strangled yelp. The men behind him tried to fire back, but the first two had stumbled as well when their leader fell back against them, and the shots went wild. Barely three seconds had passed since the door broke.

Annie sucked in a breath and fired. The eye easily tracked the splashes of color against the yellow-white hall; the blue parts were body armor, but there was more than enough purple to aim at. She squeezed the trigger as gunfire erupted from behind the barricades. Blood stained the fallen man's suit indigo-black.

But the next ones were still on their feet again and firing back. Annie ducked her head, diving back behind the barrier like a startled turtle as bullets whined overhead and cracked into the overturned desks. Sgt. Scarlett was shouting something, and she thought she heard Rabbi Lee let out a yelp of pain, but the thunder of gunfire in the small hallway drowned them out. She hit the deck and crawled on her elbows back to the edge, bracing her M16 against her shoulder. Her fellow greenshirt was firing over the top of the barrier, his shots going wild as he flinched, and the sergeant was slamming a new magazine into her weapon. Annie clung to the tiny patch of shadow cast by the edge of the barrier, once again targeted the first of the purple men, and squeezed off a burst.

Not for nothing had she practiced. Shooting a man in the knees would make him collapse forwards, but high-impact lead in the shoulder or solar plexus would send him pitching backwards—into his friends. There wasn't any room to maneuver in the corridor, and with four dead purple men on the ground, the ones trying to charge forward were having a hard time of it. When the fifth flailed backwards, it created a pile-up of chaos in the hall.

"Boom Town! Light 'em up!" Scarlett shouted.

The greenshirt demo man rose up from behind the barrier and the defenders instinctively ducked. "Fire in the hole!" he yelled. A strange-shaped package sailed over Annie's head and vanished beyond the barrier. For a moment, there was only the whine and zip of the enemy gunfire. Then-

Muffled yelps of terror were drowned out almost instantly by a colossal explosion. Annie let out an involuntary whimper as she thought she felt her teeth rattle in her head. Boom Town was well named.

Within seconds, Sgt. Scarlett was on her feet again and vaulting over the barrier. The purple men had been annihilated: the ones that had got the furthest up the corridor were still relatively intact, but their followers had been boxed in at the door and there wasn't much left. The overhead light panels had been blown out, and shards of plastic littered the scene of the explosion. The red-haired woman stared down at the destruction, her face grim.

In the moment of silence, a radio crackled. Sgt. Scarlett turned her head away from the charred mess and unclipped it from her belt.

_"What's the sit-rep?" _a man's voice said. General Hawk.

"Hawk, we've got toxo-vipers down here," Sgt. Scarlett said tightly. "They're not carrying any NBCs, either. We've got them buttoned up, but there's probably more on the way."

_"Read that, Scarlett. It looks like they're trying a diversion. Keep that junction nailed down; I'm sending backup your way. Hawk out."_

Annie, Friend to the Support Divisions, knew that NBC stood for Nuclear/Biological/Chemical—either the dangerous substances themselves or the guys that dealt with preparing or disposing them and the associated equipment. The NBC division on most bases checked gas masks and biohazard suits, and were proverbially a bunch of pencil-necked geeks; NBC supposedly stood for Nobody Cares. But 'toxo-viper?' Shaking her head, Annie rose from her half-crouched position behind the barrier. It was almost two o'clock in the morning on her fifth day in the Pit. Today would've been her secondary briefing with General Hawk, too. These Cobra people couldn't have waited one more day?

But Sgt. Scarlett was already on the move, and there was no time for Annie to think. "Boom Town, there might be another wave coming," she said. "Make up some presents for them. Rabbi Lee, cover us. Kermit, Short Stack, help me get these masks off."

Kermit, the greenie who had been firing over the top of the barrier, was aptly named: when clambered to his feet, his gangly frame and green uniform made him look like a rather dispirited Muppet. He had been one of Annie's incoming group, and she guessed he was probably as confused as she was. "Uh, sergeant?" he said carefully as he approached the edge of the blast zone. "There's . . . some of them aren't, uh, bleeding, sarge."

Annie had been trying not to look at the aftermath of the explosion. She hadn't _wanted _to look. She'd seen men who'd been hit by IEDs in Afghanistan, and it was a horrible sight. But at Kermit's words, she turned to stare before she could stop herself—and he was right. The first five men, the ones who had been shot (don't look at that last one, Annie-girl, you did your job), were quietly bleeding. But only one of the blast-zone casualties had any blood on his uniform: the others were in pieces, but their strange purple costumes were clear of anything other than soot and burn marks.

"Masks off," Scarlett repeated, and Annie and Kermit obeyed. Annie viciously bit down on the nausea rising in her throat and moved to the bullet casualties. One, two, three masks off, and underneath they were all human, all dead. She heard Kermit let out a soft gasp, and saw him hold up a head. Wires were trailing out of the place where its neck should have been.

_"Robots," _the greenshirt breathed. Shock had turned into awe. "Sergeant Scarlett, these guys are . . . _damn."_

"'Damn' is right." Scarlett clicked the radio again. "Scarlett on-line . . . Hawk, we have confirmation on that diversion on level three northeast. Twelve toxo-vipers, and only six of them were human. Cheap parts, too. They practically fell apart."

_"I'm hearing the same thing from the rest of the perimeter. Something's going on here that we're not seeing--"_

But Annie didn't hear the rest of it, because when she pulled the mask off the toxo-viper she had shot, he wheezed and grabbed at her arm.

It wasn't much of a grab, to be honest. Annie had absolutely no reason to yelp like a startled puppy and swat frantically at him with his own mask. Still, it worked: his grip loosened, and Annie scrambled backwards, covering him with her M16. "Sergeant!" she called out. "We've got a live one!"

Scarlett turned and hurried back up the corridor. She was carrying weapons stripped from the destroyed robots, and when she dropped them on the ground, Annie heard the distinct click of plastic. The robots had been carrying fake weapons? No time to think about that, though: Sgt. Scarlett was crouching down beside the wheezing toxo-viper and checking him over in a businesslike manner.

"Broken collarbone, shattered shoulder." The toxo-viper gave a faint whimper and tried to raise a hand again, but Scarlett pressed a finger into a seemingly random spot on his good arm and it went limp. "You've just made the transition from enemy combatant to prisoner," she told him coolly—and far less angrily than Annie would have managed at that hour of the morning. She opened a gauze pack from her small emergency kit and began to staunch the bleeding. "Contrary to what you might have heard from your so-called Commander, we don't torture prisoners. Certainly not ones who give us good information. So calm down and stop twitching. We'll get you fixed up. Short Stack, hold this in place." She rose to her feet and opened the communication channel once again as Annie queasily knelt by the gasping toxo-viper. "Hawk, add Lifeline to that backup if you've got him. We have an EPW. Crippled, but not critical. Maybe he can fill us in on what he's doing here."

Annie tried to think back to the emergency medical courses they'd all been put through. Nothing fancy—how to apply a pressure bandage, signs of a concussion, things like that. She remembered the medic on duty saying M16s left decently clean wounds (as bullet holes went, anyway) because they didn't shatter or fragment. He would have busted his collarbone when he hit the ground. _Apply pressure to the wound, keep the patient conscious . . . _

"Hey! _Hey!" _she said. The toxo-viper's face was pale, and his eyes were dragging shut. She couldn't blame him: he looked like a thousand miles of bad road, and falling unconscious probably seemed a lot easier than being an enemy prisoner of war. "You can't pass out now—you'll bleed to death." Not strictly true, but it got his attention. His eyes shot open.

"You shot me, you bitch," he croaked. Annie's lip curled.

"And you invaded a secret government installation with a troop of robots and an ugly purple jumpsuit. I don't think we can point fingers here. And since I'm the one currently keeping you from a _very _terminal case of anemia, maybe you could stand to be just a _bit _nicer."

Sarcasm helped. It helped a lot. The shock of combat and the relief at surviving were still taking the edge off her fear, but Annie had just survived the first up-close-and-personal firefight of her career, and some part of her knew that if she gave the terror even an inch she'd turn into a gibbering wreck. She _had _shot him, and there was no denying that. The frightening part had been how easy it was. It was those stupid jumpsuits: he hadn't looked like a man, he'd looked like something on a target range . . .

Five years after boot camp was a long time to be shooting your first man. But then, Annie had always been slow.

"Just kill me," the toxo-viper muttered. There were flecks of blood on his lips. "I'm not afraid."

"Whine, whine, whine," Annie said as she lifted the edge of the gauze to check the bleeding. It was still steady, but beginning to slow, and his breathing was good despite being shallow. Cold sweat was standing out on his skin, and she guessed that he was going into shock. The pain probably hadn't gotten through the adrenaline of the fight yet. "Complaining won't solve anything," she added briskly. Good God, she was turning into her mother.

The toxo-viper's eyes were closing again. "I said _wake up!" _she repeated. Keep the patient talking . . . "What's your name?"

A hoarse sound—it might have been a laugh, but it was hard to tell, because when his shoulder twitched he turned greenish-white. "Fuck off," he muttered.

"That's nice. You got a family, Off?" Annie said. He tried to growl at her, but there wasn't much he could do, and his breathing was shallower than ever. "Do you think your crazy group is going to tell them if you were killed in action? Give us your name, and if something goes wrong, we can tell them."

The man's lips worked for a moment. Then: "Carter," he said finally. "Carter Hall."

"Good name," Annie said briskly. "Sounds like a superhero."

There was another sound, and this one was definitely a laugh. "It is. Hawkman."

"The general will appreciate that. Sorry I shot you."

There was a clatter of feet, and she turned to see the skinny Infirmary medic come hurrying towards her. This time, though, he was wearing an eye-catchingly red uniform (camouflage apparently wasn't an issue—unless he was trying to blend into an abattoir, and she stopped _that _thought before it could go any further) and accompanied by several greenies and a skinny man Annie didn't know very well—Airtight, she thought. Lifeline dropped to his knees and began unpacking his kit quickly, running a businesslike eye over the heroically-named toxo-viper.

"You did a number on this one," he said to the world at large. "Need to get that shoulder immobilized before we go anywhere."

"Make it fast, Lifeline," Scarlett said. "We still don't know what they're playing at here. Airtight—what's happening on the other floors?"

"More toxo-vipers," Airtight reported. His words were a bit muffled by his mask and biohazard suit. "Most of them are robots. Hawk thinks it's because the guys who get put on toxo-viper duty are expendable anyway. There are vipers and siegies trying to hold the motor pool, but only these guys went below."

Scarlett's voice was grim. "I'd bet anything that we already have intruders in the ceiling. Snake was telling me how useful it is that this base has such broad air vents—perfect for crawling."

"And none of these guys were carrying any NBCs?"

"None."

Lifeline, working so fast that Annie could barely see what he was doing, had strapped the injured arm into place and done his best to immobilize the shoulder. The pain of the injury was beginning to get through the shock, and the toxo-viper almost passed out from the pain before Lifeline gave him a shot of morphine. Then he wasn't feeling much of anything, and burbled happily as the stretcher team came to haul him away.

Reports were coming in from the perimeter. No more attacks were being launched against the lower levels of the Pit, and the Cobra teams that were holding the motor pool and the training floors were trying to pull back. The notion of vents sounded ridiculous to Annie, but the team was taking it seriously: she could hear distantly echoing grunts and banging noises as men clambered through the ducts, sweeping them for enemy combatants. Scarlett was clearly itching to get in there and help them, but Hawk had ordered her and the rest of the perimeter teams to hold position.

With Rabbi Lee and Boom Town covering them, Annie helped Kermit gather up the remains of the robots and pile them against the stair door. Then, biting her lip, she and Kermit helped Airtight in moving the dead toxo-vipers. She tried not to look at them, but the strange soft weight of each of them . . . she wished they'd left their masks on. Cold sweat was running down the back of her neck, and her hands were shaking by the time they'd finished. She resumed her guard post at the edge of the first barrier and tried not to make eye contact with anybody. Scarlett was already there, methodically checking over her arms and occasionally throwing careful glances at the vent over their heads; Annie did the same, hoping the task would take some of the shake out of her limbs.

It wasn't really working.

"Are you okay, greenie?" Scarlett said. The words surprised Annie: she jumped a little, clutching at her M16 instinctively. Scarlett grinned a little wryly at that, and Annie shook her head.

"They looked like clowns," she replied. It wasn't what she'd meant to say. Preferably, she would have shown courage and bravado under fire, inspiring the higher-ups and earning her a . . . hell, who was she kidding? Scarlett raised an eyebrow. She had been narrowly clipped by one of the toxo-viper's bullets while ducking, and the white patch on her cheek flexed as she frowned a little. A thin red stain was seeping through. Bright red, not the indigo it had shown on the enemy uniforms. It didn't look any better that way.

Annie bit her lip, trying to think about how to clarify her impulsive words. "You know," she began intelligently. "All brightly-colored." She tried not to think about the toxo-vipers, who had had their color schemes terminally altered. "I thought they'd look like Storm Troopers."

"Cobra Commander believes in making a daring fashion statement as well as a political one," Airtight put in dryly from his place on Annie's other side. "It's nice of him to color-code them for everyone's convenience, though. Those mirrored visors make spotting them easy. Just go find Low-Light and ask him. Or don't. He'll find you."

Scarlett snorted and pressed her fingertips to the patch on her head. "You don't need to be Low-Light to spot them. Just listen for the 'Hail Cobra!' Or if the Commander's around, the 'run away!'"

At that, Annie laughed—or close to a laugh, though her dry throat made it more of a cough. Suddenly mindful of herself, she fished in her emergency pack for her bottle of water. It was half-empty, but that was something. The kit also carried a couple of MREs, and she broke open the heavy plastic and retrieved a packet of Fig Newtons. Aware that Kermit's eyes were fixed on the water bottle, and always conscious of the Quartermaster's Creed ("Sustainer of armies . . . Scant rations for the cold and starving troops, gunpowder, salt, and lead") she offered around both the bottle and the open pack. Few people accepted the pieces of MRE, but the water bottle was empty by the time it made its way back to her. Her throat ached as she forced down the crumbling pieces of cookie.

The crackle of the radio and the sound of loud footsteps jolted her out of her momentary daze. Snake-Eyes was coming up behind the barrier, his stance tense and alert. Scarlett didn't stand, but she looked him up and down quickly—checking for injuries, Annie thought. She must have spotted something Annie didn't, because her mouth tightened into a line.

"What's the situation, Snakes?" she said. The ninja shrugged and raised a hand, waggling it in midair to indicate "so-so."

"I was afraid of that," Scarlett said. She handed the communicator to Annie, the closest person behind the barrier, and stood. Snake-Eyes tensed a little as she walked over to him, but he relaxed as she wrapped her arms around his neck. If Annie didn't know better, she would have thought he was grinning under the mask. "I was worried," she murmured into his neck. "All these vipers, and the problems in the vents . . . I thought they'd managed to sneak someone past our guard."

Then she kneed him in the groin.

It was the cleanest, quickest crotch hit that Annie had ever seen. If a lethally disabling, future-children-preventing underhanded move could be considered poetry, then that was it. Byron would have written a sonnet about how elegantly Scarlett drove her kneecap into Snake-Eyes' . . . ninja weapon. Shakespeare would have rhymed for hours about the way she used the advantage of her arms around her neck to wrench him down and into the strike with lethal grace. _The Ryghte Welle Songe of Scarlett, who haf Stricken her Beau yn hys mofte perfonal placef. _

The black-clad man let out a very audible shriek and collapsed, his weight driving Scarlett onto her knees. He grappled weakly for her neck, but she knocked his hands aside and drove her shoulder into the hollow of his throat. "Call Hawk!" she barked, jerking her head to the side as Snake-Eyes aimed a potentially disabling blow at her temple. "Call Hawk _now!"_

Annie fumbled with the communicator, unable to believe what she was seeing. "General Hawk, we have an emergency!" she managed to say. Snake-Eyes was recovering his balance quickly—what the hell? Did they _mean _it when they said he had balls of steel?--and Scarlett, definitely no slouch at hand-to-hand, was still being pressed. "Northeast junction three! Sir, Sgt. Scarlett is fighting Sgt. Snake-Eyes! She kneed him in the balls, sir!"

"_What?" _another voice cut in. Someone else was on the channel. She thought she recognized Storm Shadow, but it was hard to tell without the sarcastic tone. _"Snake-Eyes is with me!"_

_ "Storm Shadow-" _Hawk began.

_"ZARTAN," _Storm Shadow breathed out, and the line went dead. General Hawk said a word that Annie didn't even know generals knew.

The fight was escalating, fast. The impostor Snake-Eyes wasn't as skilled as Scarlett, but he was using the close hallway to his advantage and the redhead had taken a few hard hits. He was trying to barrel past her to get to the door, but if Scarlett pressed him back down the corridor, he would be within distance to use the others as human shields. Rabbi Lee was trying to draw a bead, but the whirling figures were moving too fast: if it hadn't been for the colors, Annie couldn't have told one from the other. Kick turned into block turned into throw as the two fought, and Annie didn't have the faintest idea of what to do.

Then something went soaring past, and a white-clad figure crashed into warring pair. Storm Shadow had completely given up subtlety: he tackled the fake Snake-Eyes like a linebacker, jamming his thumbs into the pit of the man's throat and making him gasp and thrash. The pair toppled to the floor, narrowly avoiding taking Scarlett down with them. The real Snake-Eyes arrived only a second later, with half-a-dozen senior Joes—including a bruised-looking General Hawk—hot on his heels.

The impostor was pinned to the ground, with Storm Shadow crouched over him like a nightmarish spider. Storm was saying something, murmuring almost _happily _in muted Japanese, and Annie could see the fake's muscles tensing as he tried frantically to free himself from the ninja pinning him down. Snake-Eyes stood over both of them. Then, with a long look at Storm Shadow, he drew his trench knife. The fake let out a strangled yelp.

"Snake-Eyes!" General Hawk shouted. "Storm Shadow!"

The ninjas ignored him. Storm Shadow's hands were bare, and his grip on the fake's throat was so tight that his knuckles were bloodlessly white. Snake-Eyes tensed at the sound of the general's voice, but he knelt down next to the thrashing fake and pressed the trench knife against his throat. Asking if he should make it clean.

"_Stand down!" _General Hawk bellowed. He charged past the barrier, Duke and Flint hot on his heels. "Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, you _will _stand down! Zartan is a prisoner of the United States government-"

There was a hiss from Storm Shadow. "I swore an oath, General," he said slowly. The fake—Zartan—was beginning to twitch as the last of his air was cut off.

"You did. To obey my orders." The general's voice was sharp. _"_Both of you, _stand down."_

Snake-Eyes put a hand on Storm Shadow's shoulder. The white-clad ninja tensed, but reluctantly released his grip on Zartan's throat.

As soon as the hands loosened, Zartan's head shot up. He gasped for air, his mouth working silently under the mask. But as Annie watched, wide-eyed, the mask began to flex and warp. A strange glow appeared around him. Colors changed, patterns shifted, and what had looked like black cloth melted away. The mask vanished, revealing a skewed red cowl and strange diamond-shaped designs around the eyes. Revealed, Zartan glared weakly up at the ninjas, his teeth bared in a scowl.

Annie needed a drink. A big one.

And if she knew anything about people, Hawk did too. The general's shoulders were sagging a little, and neither Snake-Eyes nor Storm Shadow were looking at him. What would he have done if the ninjas hadn't obeyed his orders? Annie didn't know. But now she knew that sometimes they _didn't . . . _and suddenly, things like breaking frag regs and uniform codes didn't look so bad. Just how many things would the word _ninja _excuse, anyway?

Sighing, General Hawk clicked on his own radio and pressed a code sequence. His voice was keyed into the PA, and the corridor echoed as his voice was transmitted throughout the lower levels of the Pit. "Hawk here," he said. "The intruder has been captured. Proceed with the mopping-up in the upper levels."

He paused for a moment, shooting a glance over to where Duke and Flint were tying up the barely-conscious Zartan. Storm Shadow stood facing the wall, his hands braced against it, staring down at the floor: the muscles of his arms stood out like ropes as he visibly strained to keep himself from doing anything. Snake-Eyes was standing where Zartan had gone to ground. Scarlett's hand was on his shoulder, but he didn't seem to realize she was there. Hawk sighed a little and returned to the radio. "Good job, Joes," he continued.

"But I don't have to tell you what this means. Cobra's found a way to get into this base. All personnel make ready for quick shutdown and evac: we have at best a forty-eight-hour window, so make the most of it." Annie thought she could hear distant groans echoing from the levels below, and apparently, Hawk could hear it too. He cracked a tired grin. "If anybody's complaining right now, they can ask Sgt. Major Beach Head to explain to them what the definition of a 'nomad unit' is. That is all. Hawk signing off."

Duke approached the barrier. Between them, he and Flint were supporting a barely-conscious Zartan, who was ziptied and wearing an absolutely murderous expression. "What shall we do with this one, sir?" Duke said, saluting with his free hand. Nobody's salute should be that clean after two o'clock in the morning, Annie thought.

"Detention cell," Hawk said. "Under heavily armed guard. Nobody, Joe or otherwise, gets in to see him without my express authorization. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Duke said. He and the warrant officer hauled Zartan past the barricade. Hawk, letting out another quiet sigh, turned to check on the ninjas again. Snake-Eyes seemed to have calmed a little, but Storm Shadow was still braced against the wall like a statue.

"My office," Hawk said. "Both of you. Now."

Storm-Shadow visibly twitched. Scarlett moved to follow Snake-Eyes, but he put a hand on hers and indicated that she should stay with her group. Annie didn't want to, but she flinched as the two ninjas passed the barrier.

Four days. Four days in the goddamn Pit.

"And today would've been my briefing, too," she mumbled to herself.


	8. One for the Road

**Author's Note: **Chapter eight. Annie deals with the inevitable consequences of being confused as hell, tries to suss out how exactly the team's mind works under pressure, and learns that a) that mistakes don't necessarily go away just because Cobra invaded the Pit, and b) quartermasters can be just as creatively evil with their punishments as scary PT instructors.

In this chapter, her relationships with various members of the Joe team begin to coalesce a little more. I'm not planning to turn this into a canon/OC fic—far from it—but I do think that it's likely that she would get along amiably with at least some of the Joes. And honestly, Roadblock can't be cooking 24/7: it's entirely possible that other cooks could still utilize their kitchen privileges for bribery purposes.

Side note: 92G is the MOS for quartermasters assigned to food service.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: One for the Road**

The G.I. Joe team was now officially under status code 1071: "Pitfall." Changes had to be made, and quickly, if they were going to get the whole team packed up and ready to leave as soon as possible. Security measures had been tripled for the time it would take to clean out the base, and schedules were altered. For one thing, there was no morning PT. There was no _time _for morning PT.

Beach Head was not in a good mood.

Annie didn't know much yet, and there wasn't time for that briefing she and the other greenies had been promised. Instead, she learned as generations of soldiers had always learned: by shutting up and eavesdropping on the experts. Her mother had always said that the best way to learn was to sit quietly while the experienced ones talked. Granted, nobody was actually going to be _sitting_ while Pitfall was in effect, but she managed just as well by keeping an ear out while she fetched, carried, cleaned, packed, and panicked.

The word was "Cobra." She'd heard of them before, of course: she had gotten the standard briefing soon after getting off the transport, and back before then, she remembered hearing reports about battles and thefts on the news. Now she was getting the other side. Crazed pseudo-Nazi new world orders, mad scientists, cloning projects, robots, brainwashing, taking over towns in Oregon. Annie had trouble believing half of it, but she knew that if she'd heard it all before getting a few days' experience in the Pit, she would have dismissed every part of it out of hand. Now, with the memory of the toxo-vipers fresh in her mind and the mental image of Zartan and his color-changing skin, her bar for weirdness had risen significantly.

As for Zartan . . . well, the ninjas weren't talking, but the kitchen crew had the inside story. Storm Shadow had some kind of blood feud against him—"My name is Thomas Arashikage. You killed my uncle. Prepare to die" as Chopper had put it—and Snake-Eyes was joining in. Both were desperate to kill Zartan, which didn't mesh well with their positions as subordinates to General Hawk. The possibility of bloody ninja vengeance meant that Zartan was being kept under extremely strong guard . . . Not that the quartermasters had been briefed about the security conditions, but the head of the custodial division stopped into the kitchen every day for a noon cup of coffee, and he was the one who had to clean up after "those guys who were welding metal grates over all the ventilation ducts." According to him, the laundry crew was already laying in extra bleach for Storm Shadow's uniform, and Maintenance had perfected a new technique for getting the Arashikage poison solution out of carpet. In response to this, the prisoner appeared determined to never sleep again: after the fourth trip down with a Thermos, the kitchen crew gave up and just set up a coffee urn next to his cell.

Annie couldn't exactly blame him. The idea of being the target of a ninja vendetta gave her the chills.

Not that there was much to think about that kind of thing. In addition to helping clean out the Pit, the kitchen staff still had to keep everyone fed. The lack of PT meant that there was a little more time available, but Annie couldn't help thinking that she was getting just as much exercise despite not having Beach Head breathing down her back. It didn't help that part of Pitfall was getting all the permanently-installed appliances shut down, so the kitchen was using only what it absolutely had to and was scrambling to find a use for all its leftover supplies. People were eating a lot of sandwiches.

The mood in the Pit was mixed. Annie found herself hovering near the kitchen door as she worked, sometimes voluntarily taking up the slack in the serving line in an effort to gauge what was going on in peoples' heads. People were . . . it was hard to explain. The same strange air of confidence that had pervaded during the emergency was still there, a little more strained but unmistakable. Nobody was _happy _that Cobra had gotten into the Pit, but the attitude was businesslike: there was no point in complaining about what _might_ have happened when you had work to do in the here and now. On the other hand, bitching about what was _actually _happening was practically mandatory. (Lift-Ticket, Cross-Country, you're up.) The Joes were a lot more forgiving about blowing off steam than some of the other units Annie had served with. But overall, they seemed immune to the extraordinary situation they were in. They just got on with things.

Maybe it helped that nobody had died. The point of the attack seemed to have been a distraction—using toxo-vipers and robots to provide cover so that Zartan could be quietly inserted into the Pit. "Everybody knows," Whiskey Down told Annie, grimacing a little as he hefted his end of the crate they were packing, "that Cobra considers its NBC people expendable. They didn't even bother to arm 'em properly because they were just there to get their asses kicked. Lucky for us, though—good practice for the greenies."

Annie had to agree with that. It _had _been good practice . . . of a sort . . . She hadn't actually killed anybody, or she didn't think she did . . . And that was another one of those topics that just didn't bear thinking about when there was work to be done. She squashed the memory of the firefight firmly, trying to focus on the tasks at hand. None of the Joes had died, and that was the thing to hold on to.

Granted, there had been some injuries, and she knew that about as well as anyone else did. Clutch, who had been in the motor pool when the toxo-vipers broke in, had gotten body-checked by one of the robots, leaving his neck and lungs bruised all to hell. (Rumor had it that Doc had to drug him to get him to shut up long enough to be moved.) Sgt. Slaughter should have been in the infirmary, but he had cleverly averted attention from his injured ankle by offering to show anyone who asked what a _real _"potentially incapacitating tissue laceration" was. Annie knew these because despite Pitfall, life went on as it always must, and she was once again stuck on bucket duty.

Eighteen hours after she had first been rustled out of bed, she was wheeling her cart back down the hall to the infirmary. Bucket chow was simpler under Pitfall conditions: soup and soft bread, virtually guaranteed to elicit bitching and moaning from the soldiers stuck on bedrest. Not that she minded much—if someone was still in bed while the Pit was being struck, they were there because they had to be and probably were due some of that therapeutic complaining.

This time, Lifeline met her at the door with a couple of interns in tow. Since interns were to medical staff what humans were to Mutt (someone who hadn't quite ascended to the level of actual person yet and could be considered fair game as far as harassment is concerned), they seemed apprehensive about being summoned for yet another duty, but it soon turned out that Lifeline had only deputized them to help Annie distribute the food. With their assistance, she unpacked the cart and began passing out the rations.

Most of the patients on bedrest were people Annie didn't recognize. A few were fellow greenshirts, and one was vaguely familiar as the chopper pilot that had brought Annie and the rest of her group to the Pit only a few days previously. Snow Job was still there, clearly in a pique over his shattered leg preventing him from taking part in the night's firefight, and she could see one half of the bruised Clutch peeking out from behind a privacy screen.

One bed over from Snow Job, a fully-clothed Dusty was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, in the process of signing his release forms. His face was pale under its heavy tan—_must have been one hell of a concussion, _Annie thought—and he wasn't moving with much confidence, but this was Pitfall and if you could walk, you could help get the place squared away. Nevertheless, he was still jabbing away at Snow Job, and Snow Job was still simultaneously ignoring and insulting him.

She did a quick mental check of the food supplies. "Are you eating here?" she asked the desert trooper, trying not to make it obvious that she was hoping he wasn't. One more set of dishes to clean, one more addition in the chorus of complaining . . . However, Dusty inadvertently promoted himself from "background soldier" to "soldier who doesn't actively inhibit the 92Gs" when he shook his head.

"Nah. Doc says my brain's only a little bruised now." He grinned a little, amiable to a T, and began to lace up his boots. "And if what I hear about Beach's mood is true, the best place to be right now is looking busy, not lying around complaining about a little old thing like brain damage. I'll be in the mess hall."

"Better hurry, then." Annie turned to the next bed and began to lay out the tray, watched keenly by a bandaged and clearly ravenous Footloose. She twisted a little to aim her next words at Dusty while still keeping an eye on her work. "The self-serve station is putting nachos out tonight, and Whiskey Down said something about a 'backlash.'"

Footloose let out a heartfelt groan at the mention of nachos, and Dusty perked up visibly. "Are those the kind with the liquid cheese that comes in the big bag? Where the bag goes in the plastic box and you stick your plate under the spout and press the button that says 'press for cheese'?"

"That's the one. Are they popular?"

"You could say that." Dusty finished lacing up his boots and swung his feet onto the floor, tucking the clipboard with his release form under his arm. "We normally only have 'em when 'Block's out on a mission; something about that 'press for cheese' thing offends his gourmet soul. If 'Block is on base and it's nacho night, you _definitely _don't want to miss the argument. Dinner and a show."

Annie grimaced a bit as she moved on to the next bed. Dusty, release form in hand, followed behind as he looked around for Lifeline. "Lucky us, then," she said as she assembled the tray for the half-conscious greenshirt there. "But I don't care how angry he gets—we have to use it all up. All the excess perishables and the stuff we can't transport. Ever tried stowing a fifteen-pound sack of liquid cheese product? One time in Germany, someone _fell _on it."

There was a cough from the next bed over. Clutch was lying there, looking more than a little worse for wear; judging by his appearance, something had slammed him hard in the chest and throat, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Hey, Dusty," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Go find Ace and put fifty bucks on five or more broken plates before dinner's over. I'll pay you back tomorrow."

"Gotcha covered." Annie gave the desert trooper an incredulous stare but either he didn't notice or it didn't faze him. He stopped by Clutch's bed to check over his discharge paperwork, but aimed a grin at his fellow invalid all the same. "Maybe you can recoup your losses on the greenshirt-washout pool. Sixteen drops? _Really?"_

Clutch shook his head. "I thought it was a sure thing. One of 'em pissed himself when Beach turned up."

Hearing that, Annie couldn't help snorting. Clutch grinned at her. "Problem?"

"Ninjas, and now Beach Head." She shook her head as she fixed the next tray. "The bogeymen of the twentieth century. If Cobra Commander has any kids, he probably tells them to be good or the Joes will get 'em."

"Cobra Commander _does _have a kid," Dusty pointed out. Annie raised an eyebrow. "His name's Billy. Smart. Lost a leg and an eye while fighting Cobra. Trained with Storm Shadow for a while. That prosthetic leg gives him one hell of a kick." The desert trooper scratched his head. "I think he's staying with his mother now. Storm said he's gonna make him an official apprentice once he's old enough to drive."

" . . . okay," Annie said slowly. "Now you're just pulling my leg."

Dusty held up his hands, still clutching the release forms in one of them. "Would I lie?"

"Yes," Clutch and Snow Job said together. Dusty managed to flip them both off while still keeping hold of the paperwork—an impressive feat of ambidexterity, Annie had to admit.

"I've got nothing to prove. And you can ask anyone on base about it—the kid's scary good." Dusty shrugged, but perked up as he spotted a dark-skinned man in a white coat coming down the aisle. "Hey! Hey, Doc! I've got my paperwork. Can I go now? It's nacho night."

"You know the rules," Doc said as he took the forms. "Light duty, as far as you can manage. Don't go climbing on any of the catwalks. If you start getting dizzy, headaches, or blurred vision, get back here _right away. _I know I can trust you not to do anything stupid, so don't do anything to make me revise that judgment. And if you even think about getting in a fight, I'm sending you to into the city for a prostate exam. Do I make myself clear?"

"You're a sadist, Doc," Dusty said cheerfully.

The medic shook his head. "Ah, but it would be downright embarrassing if I saved you from bullets and shrapnel, only to have you die from prostate cancer. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Off you go."

Dusty threw a mock salute to Doc, grinned at Clutch and Snow Job, nodded to Annie, and headed out of the infirmary with a bit of a spring in his step. His color still wasn't very good, and that springy step seemed a bit uneven, but otherwise he was clearly enjoying being up and about again. Annie, who knew she was scheduled to be part of a loading crew again as soon as she got off dinner duty, didn't see what he was so happy about. Her muscles were already aching after the long day and the lack of sleep: getting out of bed was hardly a privilege from her point of view.

Still . . . whatever floated his boat. Annie moved on down the rows. The interns had handed out the trays on the other side with remarkable quickness, and everybody was already eating. The bitching was starting up, too. She ran her finger down the checklist and counted off: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . .

"Sir?" she said. Doc looked up. "The order was for eighteen patients to be fed. Was the eighteenth supposed to be Dusty?"

Doc shook his head. "The eighteenth was that toxo-viper." Annie's stomach clenched at the words, and her sudden shock must have shown on her face, because the doctor raised an eyebrow. "No, he's not dead. We put him on the list because we thought he'd be on solids, but his injuries were more severe than we'd thought. We're feeding him intravenously right now—probably more than his crew would do for us."

"What's going to happen to him, sir?" Annie said carefully.

"We don't normally move base with prisoners, but right now there's not a lot of choice. He and Zartan will be coming with us, under heavy guard." Doc gave her an odd look. "Weren't you the one that shot him?"

She nodded. The tension in her gut was easing, but it was quickly replaced by mixed emotions: annoyance, relief that the viper hadn't died, shame that she had shot him and shame that she was ashamed. It was a bit late in her military career to be having a crisis of conscience, but—well—

_ Never mind, Annie. Work to do._

And the worrisome thing was that Doc seemed to know all of it. His look had shifted a bit, and there was a note of almost-sympathy in his voice when he spoke. "You'd better get moving," he said, deliberately changing the subject. "If it's nacho night, then I'll be seeing at least five cases of indigestion in the next few minutes."

"Yes, sir." Thank God for the distraction. Annie repacked the cart and set off back down the rows of beds, quietly promising herself that she would bake Doc a big chocolate cake. She might not be Roadblock, but she was still a pretty good cook—and hell, cake was cake.

The thought cheered her immensely. Quartermasters sometimes didn't get much respect, but cooks who rewarded good behavior with baked goods could become very well-liked indeed. And if Doc could threaten his patients with prostate exams, then maybe Annie could get into the G.I. Joe spirit by bribing people with food. It wouldn't hurt to try.

One person who could not be so bribed, however, was Roadblock. While the mess hall itself showed no particular signs of a struggle—unless the three-way glaring contest over the extra-spicy salsa was counted—the kitchen wasn't so lucky. Roadblock was standing by the long counter, holding a fifteen-pound bag of liquid cheese easily in one hand and pointing at Whiskey Down with the other. Whiskey seemed to be holding his ground, but it was clear from his demeanor that this wasn't something he wanted to deal with.

"This," Roadblock said, "is not cheese. This is yellow dye number seven with plastic added. I wouldn't use this for dip. I wouldn't use this for shower grout. Cobra Commander puts caviar on saltines, and even _he_ wouldn't use this! So why is _G.I. Joe _being served this crap?" He glared down at the senior quartermaster, a figure of holy vengeance on behalf of all non-artificial dairy products. Annie fought the urge to look for a camera.

"You know the Pitfall rules, Roadblock," Whiskey said. "If we can't transport it, we have to use it up."

"So use it up. Give it to Beach to pour in the mud pit. Feed it to Zartan! But don't go giving it to my team!" Roadblock crossed his arms, clearly not going to concede the point. The bag of cheese sloshed warningly.

Annie was tempted to eavesdrop on the conversation, but quartermaster-versus-heavy-gunner culinary squabbles not withstanding, the kitchen was its usual hive of activity and everybody needed to pitch in. She took her turn at the chopping station and the grill, trying to keep half an ear on what was going on. After twenty-five minutes of wrangling over vintages, flavors, and the dictionary definition of "cheese," Whiskey Down conceded that what went with the nachos was technically a "cheeselike product" but refused to serve anything else, citing Pitfall regulations. Roadblock growled a little, rolled up his sleeves, invaded the storeroom with considerably more effort than Cobra had put into invading the Pit, and produced a block of Gouda from his own personal stash. He pushed Chopper away from the counter and began grating the cheese with the intensity of a brain surgeon.

"Sir," Annie murmured to Whiskey as he moved over to the grill, "why didn't you kick him out? I know he's supposed to be some kind of super-cook, but rank and procedure-"

To her surprise, the senior quartermaster just grinned. It was only a little, but it was there: the lines in his face deepened, and he seemed to be holding back a bit of laughter. "Roadblock knows the rules," he said quietly, joining Annie by the grill, "but he's got the soul of a chef. Not a cook, neither—a real honest-to-God gourmet. Think of it this way. Did the bedridden Joes complain when you brought the bucket chow down?"

"Well, yes-"

"But did they eat it?"

"Yes."

"Exactly. People whine, but they get the work done." Whiskey Down shook his head a bit. "But sometimes, the kind of chow we have to make offends Roadblock's sensibilities: he _knows _it's because of regs or because we need to use this stuff up, but he wouldn't be Roadblock if he didn't say it stank. If I let him argue with me for a while, he'll take over and fix something even when it's not his night. He gets to say what he thinks, the team gets an extra dish we don't have to cook, and I have an excuse to stand around talking for fifteen minutes instead of working. Everybody wins."

Annie was briefly tempted to say something—something about regulations, maybe, or how a soldier making trouble for the support division should be reported—but there didn't seem to be much use to it right then. She was achy, still confused from her moment of worry in the infirmary, and Roadblock . . . well, when Whiskey Down put it like that, Roadblock invading the kitchen didn't seem like such a big deal. That damn work was still getting done, after all. Nothing to see here. These aren't the broken regs you're looking for.

And speaking of broken regs, a thought occurred. "Too bad for Clutch," she said. "He just lost fifty bucks."

"Betting again? Clutch has never stopped hoping for a repeat of what happened to that rack of dishes. And speaking of losing," Whiskey Down added calmly, "we're going to have some help while we clear out the kitchen tomorrow. Dusty is coming down to get the freezers squared away, and there'll be a couple of KPs for the grunt work."

Annie perked up. Well, that was good news at any rate. "Dusty?" she said. "A desert trooper fixes freezers?"

"And air conditioners. Irony is practically a requirement around here." Whiskey cocked his head. "It's going to be your job to supervise those KPs personally, understood? That's an order."

That surprised Annie. She loved supervising KPs—as the Control Freak incident attested. But she'd been punished for that (still officially pulling extra hours for that, though Pitfall meant that now everybody was doing the same schedule she was) and hadn't expected to regain control of the kitchen monkeys so soon. "Sir?" she said cautiously. Maybe her work during the Cobra attack had put her back in Whiskey's good books.

He noticed her quizzical expression and grinned again. "You were on site when it happened," he said. A warm feeling began to spread through Annie's chest: she'd been right! Proven reliability will always redeem one silly mistake. "So," Whiskey continued, breaking her reverie a little, "that means you're the only one who won't be asking them questions about the incident. They're already testy, and General Hawk has to make a show of punishing them in case Washington starts asking questions, so it won't be pretty." He caught her surprised expression. "What? You didn't think we'd forgotten about you shoving that Marine under the sink?"

Now Annie was royally confused. "Sir, what are you talking about?" The warm feeling was fading, replaced by a sense of dread.

"The ninjas are on KP." Whiskey shook his head a little. "You're the most junior, _and _you need to work on that attitude problem, so you get to play with them. Fair warning—don't ask them to pass you anything you don't want thrown."

Annie gulped. "Who's being punished here? Them or me?"

"Both." Whiskey Down shrugged one shoulder, apparently unconcerned with the fact that he'd just placed Annie in the position of giving orders to angry ninjas. Ninjas, who hated taking orders anyway, who were already in a bad mood over being unable to kill someone they had a personal grudge against, and who would not look kindly on the PFC who would be telling them to do dishes.

"To err is human, to forgive divine," Whiskey continued blithely. "Neither of which is G.I. Joe policy. Remember: no passing, and for the love of God, don't ask them to chop any vegetables. Carry on, Short Stack."


	9. The Fork in the Microwave

**Author's Note: **There is no way in Hell that this chapter can measure up to all the grand things I had planned for it. I'm sorry, readers. Mea culpa.

On the other hand . . . Ninjas. On KP.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: The Fork in the Microwave**

Tap, tap, tap. The soft sound of pen against paper, and the international sign for "how the hell do I write this letter?"

Curled up in her bunk, Annie sighed and hunched over her notepad, trying to concentrate. Stress and lack of sleep had conspired to give her a rampaging headache, but there wasn't much to be done about it: she had to write that letter, come hell or high water, and it would be easier to get it done if she wasn't on painkillers at the same time. Writing to this particular person required all the cunning and verbal agility she could muster.

_Dear Ma,_

There. That was safe enough.

_I write this from an unknown destination-_

No. Wrong wrong wrong. Sarah-Ellen Barindowsky "Ma" Gorshin was not the sort of person you could use unusual turns of phrase with. Ma . . . well, if Ma had been in G.I. Joe, her name would be Eavesdrop. Gossip was her _raison d'etre_, and she had a flawless memory and an eerily encyclopedic knowledge of both the world and her daughter. If Annie used that opening, Ma would see the stilted, formal language and instantly deduce that her daughter was keeping secrets from her. Which, technically speaking, Annie was: secrets don't come more secret than the big "CLASSIFIED" stamp on her deployment orders. But she had to write the letter, because some people you just don't screw with. General Hawk had nothing on Ma.

Well, there was always the last resort. Telling the truth. Or most of the truth, anyway: never an easy proposition when your mother's involved, and especially not after a really, really bad day. Annie cringed and began again.

_I don't know where I'm going yet, because there's been some industrial accidents here _(true enough, when you considered that war involved numerous industries and that bullets winding up anywhere near a quartermaster could be definitely called an accident) _and all of us are being reassigned while they get the place cleaned up. Don't worry, I'm okay! But it's another one of those need-to-know things, and I'm not high enough to need to know. I'll give you the forwarding address for the mail as soon as I get it._

_ Thanks for the last letter. In answer to your question—yes, there's lots of good-looking guys around here, and yes, they don't mind dating so much in this outfit, but no, I'm not asking any of them out. I'm a- _greenshirt?-_rookie here and anyway, I think they're all a little nutty. Nice, but nutty. There're two different dog handlers who treat their dogs like human beings, a guy who swears he's freezing any time the thermometer drops below sixty-five, and this combat teacher named Tommy who acts like a smug jackass. Plus, grunts and quartermasters don't mix. Give up on the future grandchildren, okay?_

_ I did some work with the sharpshooting class not too long ago. The teacher is a guy named- _Low Light?-_Lou, and he doesn't talk much, but he said if I can stop humming I might be able to score more time with the class. The PT instructor said I should consider gluing my mouth shut, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. I think he's angry that his obstacle course was one of the things that got messed up._

_ I might not be able to write much for a while because there's a lot of tension around here. Some people think the accident might not have been an accident—_

Annie paused and frowned at the paper. Was there a better way to put that? She wasn't sure. Maybe she could just not send the letter.

Writing letters had never been her strong suit, but Ma freaked out if she didn't send at least one a week. She knew for a fact that every photo she'd ever sent home went on the big message board in the diner, and that Ma got some kind of perverse pride out of telling people about Annie's postings in dangerous territory. Too bad she couldn't own up entirely—Ma would've adored those Cobra bastards, especially the one that Annie had put a bullet in. But secret was secret.

Her brain gave a throb, and she put her head down on her knees and groaned. Why was writing to her mother harder than shooting a man? Maybe it was that the man didn't look like a man; he'd looked like, well, a purple-suited robot with a really big gun. But she couldn't deal with her Ma by shooting her. Knowing Ma, she'd just get right back up and threaten to make Annie serve Mr. Klepczak in booth twelve, who was remarkably indiscriminate about whose ass he grabbed.

_-the accident might not have been an accident. They think someone might have been pulling a prank, so everyone's on edge and they're trying to find out who did it. All us newbies got questioned, but I've got an alibi you could use for a rolling pin, so nobody's getting in my face about it._

_ I'm doing really well, though. That guy I mentioned—the guy who freezes if it's not frying out—is actually a qualified refrigerator repairer, so he's been helping us get all the units here fixed up before we move out. His name is—_

Damn. What was his name, anyway? She couldn't put "Dusty" in a letter, because Ma loved codenames and would repeat them at every opportunity. It had been all right when Annie's letters mentioned D12 (corpsman in Korea, so-called because nobody could pronounce "Doschevitzen"), Recon (engineer in Germany, real name Rincohn) or SassyAss (long story), but Dusty was an official-type Joe codename and it would be a major breach of secrecy to use it in a civilian communique. Yet it would look strange if she mentioned someone in greater detail and never mentioned his name . . .

Oh, well. Compromise time. Thank God Ma would never meet any of these people.

_His name is Sandy. It's kind of nice to have him in the kitchen, because he's very friendly and funny. Not like __Sna __a pair of sergeants I got on KP today. They were complete nightmares. Sandy says that sometimes people act like that when they're overstressed._

She stopped again, tapping the pen against her lips as she thought. "Overstressed." Hah. Not a good word for ninjas, but about as close as she could get. After all, they were very tightly-wound . . . and they sure stressed _her _out.

Hoo boy. The ninjas. Those two were _definitely _up Ma's alley. They were straight out of those TV shows she liked—the ones she'd started on after she'd dumped _Star Trek _for being too dull. (Read: peaceful.) But Ma never had to have those insanely-skilled, sneaky, loathesome geniuses of torment under her control. Especially not after she'd made the mistake of pissing them off.

* * *

_Eighteen hours earlier . . . _

They were grouchy. She was grouchy.

They didn't want to be there. Neither did she.

They were being punished for trying to kill a prisoner of the United States government. She was being punished for shoving a jarhead under a sink.

This was war.

Annie was in the kitchen long before she was due to be up. There weren't any other KP assignments today: it was as if some mysterious thing had spooked everyone into good behavior. That was fine with her. It's easier to plan your counterattack if there's nobody around, tripping over your plans.

Plotting music! She needed plotting music. She flipped on the radio, surfing through the various channels before settling on "Eye of the Tiger." Which, given that the ninjas made her feel like just as much of a grade-school dropout as Rocky Balboa ever was, could be considered perfectly appropriate. She cranked the volume up, ignoring the off-kilter looks from the cleaning personnel swabbing out the ovens, and surveyed her territory.

Technically speaking, a ninja in the kitchen ought to be a cook's dream come true. Annie had visited one of those newfangled sushi restaurants once, where the chef flipped the ingredients and cut eggs in half in midair; clearly, some measure of practice at stabbing and slicing things could help in cooking. But those chefs . . . well, they weren't _ninjas. _Especially not cranky, angry, sneaky-bastard ninjas like Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes.

In an ideal world, this could have turned into something good. The two different groups of high school misfits, put on detention together, teaming up to make grouchy ol' Principal Abernathy's life a living hell. Maybe Annie could have been played by Molly Ringwald. (Storm Shadow? He could be that punk kid from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.) Annie liked this scenario, but rejected it for two reasons: 1) she was actually on Abernathy's side on this, and 2) attempting to murder an enemy prisoner of war probably counted as something slightly worse than "wacky hijinks."

Annie was forced to face the facts. In only a few hours, there would be two hostile engines of death under her personal command, doubtless remembering everything she made them do and planning to give it back to her in spades. She had three options. Firstly, she could cry like a girl. This was tempting, and doubtless therapeutic, but not technically helpful. Secondly, she could try to cooperate with the ninjas. This was also tempting, and a little more likely to succeed, but would involve a truly staggering amount of grovelling for no guaranteed payback. Ninjas were frightening, vindictive, and pointy.

Thirdly, she could do everything in her power to make their lives miserable. Worryingly, this was the most tempting of all.

Of course, she knew that she would be in hand-to-hand Hell for the next _forever _if she went forward with that plan. Annie was under no illusions: her handful of days in G.I. Joe had already shown her that there was far more going on with the unit than she had ever imagined, and that the ninjas were a big part of it. She was a cog in the domestic machine, and they were some of the finest warriors on the planet. For a ninja, a personality disorder was probably required by law, and she would be bucking for serious pain if she decided to deliberately irritate them.

But the little voice in her head—the voice you should never, ever listen to—was pointing out that no matter what she did, the grouchy commandos would cause her misery. What was that old saying? Might as well be hanged for a sheep as be hung like a lamb? Something like that. And frankly, torturing the ninjas was the only possibility that offered an equal payback in schadenfreude for the pain she was sure to suffer.

"To know an enemy, you must understand the enemy," Sun Tzu probably said. Annie's knowledge of classical texts stopped dead at her seventh-grade report on the Canterbury Tales, but the deathless possible-words of the great tactician made good sense. She couldn't outmuscle the ninjas, and she certainly couldn't out-sadism them. (Was that even a verb? Could you sadism somebody?) And they would take any opportunity she gave them to terrorize the kitchen staff. So how could she inflict maximum pain without giving them that opportunity?

It was then, standing there in the kitchen with "Eye of the Tiger" fading into a commercial for Hop 'n Gator ("the beer with Gatorade!"), that Annie had her great inspiration.

* * *

PT the next morning was strange, to say the least. The other quartermasters were giving her a wide berth, although Whiskey Down kept shooting her inquisitive glances and Eighty-Six impulsively hugged her before they went onto the obstacle course. Even Sgt. Major Beach Head was acting weird—which is to say he laughed when he saw her and didn't bellow her into temporary deafness more than three times. By the time the cooks hit the showers, Annie had the distinct feeling of wearing a scarlet letter. D for Dead Meat, maybe.

Breakfast preparations went forward as usual. Dash for the showers, scrub like hell to get all the PT grit off in less than five minutes before grabbing clean cammies and stampeding for the kitchen. Fire up the grill, crack open three more ten-gallon jugs of milk for the dispensers at the cereal station. Pancakes again this morning, with pear compote and cinnamon, and this time there were no KP monkeys to help. Except . . .

"Good morning."

Annie could have sworn she was in the clear. She had had her back to the room for approximately three seconds while she fumbled with a container of condensed milk, but her ears were open and she was more than ready. _Okay, _she had been telling herself. _Let's go. Let's do this. Bring it on. Hasta la vista, baby. _Then, for the handful of seconds that it took her to find one can of pears, the ninjas materialized. _Right behind her._

It turns out that cans of pears in syrup are really, really heavy when dropped from shoulder height. Also, that rubber kitchen clogs don't protect your toes nearly as well as desert boots.

"Um." Said this mistress of composure.

Both ninjas had clearly just come off of PT themselves. Storm Shadow was wearing a white tank top and gray sweats, and the top had turned almost transparent after a good soaking in one of Beach Head's many inventive pits o' doom; Annie could see the fuzzy outlines of several unusual markings, and she guessed that if she stuck her head a bit closer, she could see quite a few scars on his chest. (She didn't, however. Despite evidence to the contrary, the quartermaster did not in fact have a death wish.) Snake-Eyes was just in his usual skinsuit. Both ninjas were dripping wet and covered in gray-green mud, although Annie couldn't help noting that there were no muddy footprints leading from the door. She didn't dare glance up at the ceiling, but made a mental note to get the janitorial staff into the air ducts with mops later.

"Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes, reporting for KP," said the more talkative of the ninjas with crisp officialness. Only the glint in Storm's eye gave away the fact that he was feeling less than a hundred percent happy with the current situation. In fact, if Annie had learned anything in her past few days in the Pit, that glint could be called "manic." Or possibly "plotting."

"Here, as ordered," Storm added calmly. Annie took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. Normally, when ninjas were calm, pain happened. But she'd pretty much resigned herself to that when she made her plan, so . . . Against all odds, she found herself cracking a small grin. After a certain point, she told herself, there was nothing more that they could do to her. The ball was in her court.

"Good," she said, crossing her arms. "For starters, you two are absolutely filthy. That's against hygiene regulations. Both of you, go scrub up now, and quickly. Kitchen clogs and rubber gloves are by the door."

She wasn't sure what Storm Shadow had been expecting. Maybe he was used to terrorizing kitchen staff and had expected deference; she hadn't been around long enough to know for sure. Or maybe it was the opposite, that he had thought she would start barking orders and making him clean grease traps. (It had been tempting, to say the least.) But though she was a quartermaster now, Annie was still at heart a waitress—and waitresses can't either yell or kowtow. They have to be subtle.

And they know a lot about making customers' lives miserable. Annie giggled inwardly, thinking of her plan.

At least the ninjas cleaned up quickly; they reappeared behind her again less than a minute later. (At least, so she noted after she was finished having a minor heart attack.) Nobody could make rubber clogs and gloves look good, but they seemed to be bearing the indignity with their usual aplomb. At least, Snake-Eyes was . . . as far as Annie could tell through his clean mask, which was thick enough to effectively conceal any facial expressions. Storm Shadow still seemed to be tense, waiting to spring. It was obvious: he hated being there, he hated the fact that he was there because he'd tried to kill a man who he thought deserved to die, and he hated the oversized petunia-pink rubber gloves that had been the only set left on the rack. Annie couldn't blame him on that last count, but the other two meant that she had to tread carefully. At least, in the beginning.

"All right, sergeants," she said, turning back to the pair. The other quartermasters had given up trying to get her to contribute to that morning's breakfast; instead, both the QMs and their assistants steered a wide berth around the trio, somehow managing to convey that they saw absolutely nothing at all and yet inexplicably decided to avoid that particular area of the kitchen for some reason. Maybe it fell under the United States' rules about letting the condemned die with dignity. "Let's get to work."

Storm Shadow's facade cracked just a little, and a sly grin crossed his lips. Evidently, he thought he had the upper hand. For a moment, Annie almost pitied him. "What is it, Short Stack?" he said. "Grease traps? Garbage duty?" The grin widened. "Knife sharpening?"

All activities with potential for chaos. (Whiskey Down had once favored her with an explanation about those interesting slash marks in the linoleum, and Annie had learned her lesson well.) But unfortunately for the ninjas, chaos wasn't part of the Plan. She turned back to her station and retrieved two small objects, holding them up for the commandos to see.

"Know what this is?"

The objects were rectangular and made of metal, and shaped so that one slid seamlessly into the other to make a complete metal box. The box had a thin slit in one end of it, with the edges smoothed over as if by long use. The ninjas contemplated it for a moment as Annie slid the pieces apart again.

"An extremely dull puzzle," Storm Shadow said dryly. Snake-Eyes signed something which Annie didn't catch, but Storm Shadow nodded. "Ah. My sword-brother's superior knowledge of kitchen accessories has bested me. He says it's a napkin dispenser."

"Correct." Annie reassembled and disassembled the dispenser again. "There are fifty napkin dispensers in the mess. Four are the large industrial models, the rest are on the individual tables. Forty more are scattered throughout the Pit, in the kitchenettes and janitor's closets. You two are going to fill every one."

There was a moment of silence, and then Storm's eyes narrowed slightly. "That's it?" he said. "Fill napkin dispensers?"

Annie nodded. She didn't have to be Psyche-Out to guess that Storm Shadow was wondering what the catch was. It wasn't an obvious attempt at humiliating them, it wasn't an onerous duty that she was clearly pushing off onto them . . . And she could almost see the penny drop. And there was _no potential for chaos._

Oh, Annie was sure that the two of them could come up with something, given a bit of time. But she didn't intend to let them have that time. "Insert the napkin stack sideways, like _this," _she quickly rattled off, demonstrating the procedure as quickly as possible. "Napkins are in the boxes by the drawer. One dispenser on every table. Go."

Exchanging inscrutable glances, the ninjas complied. Annie waited until they were out of sight before allowing herself a small, secret grin. _Chew on that, boys._

It is a universal fact of life that ninjas are easily bored. When you're capable of improvising a weapon out of almost anything at hand, constantly thinking fifteen moves ahead of everybody else in the room, and in possession of a reputation that would make Chairman Mao piss his pants in sheer terror, a lot of what happens in life just doesn't bother you. Consequently, there are lot fewer things to occupy your amazing ninja brain, and boredom quickly results.

Previous attempts at putting the ninjas on KP had resulted in the varying disasters known only as the Incidents. There had been the Soap Incident, when the Joes' former head of food services had decided that what Storm and Snake needed was to spend a few hours on their hands and knees scrubbing every inch of the kitchen tile. One broken femur and an impromptu skating competition later, Whiskey Down had been hastily promoted to fill the position and promptly instituted a policy of "no ninjas. Ever." But the executive orders of a quartermaster are nothing compared to the force of Murphy's Law, and Incidents continued to happen with fair regularity.

Shingle had once decided to utilize Storm's skills by, yes, putting him on knife-sharpening duty. Unfortunately, people who routinely chop through bone take the notion of "sharp as you can" _very _seriously, and the next cleaver Shingle had been handed actually went through the cutting board, through the counter, and narrowly avoided doing serious damage to the plumbing. People were still finding hand-eating cutlery in the backs of the drawers. The Cleaver Incident was rarely mentioned again.

And nobody wanted to talk about Snake-Eyes' spell with the dishwasher.

It isn't that ninjas are evil. (Technically.) What they are, especially when confronted with the authority of non-ninjas whom they don't respect, is anarchic.

So why are we dragging out all this ancient history? Because, dear reader, while Annie Gorshin smiled her little secret smile in the kitchen, she did not have the opportunity to directly observe what sort of effect her Plan was having on the ninjas currently reassembling the twenty-ninth and thirtieth napkin dispensers. It happens that, just as she had anticipated, the humble napkin dispenser is not a device well-suited to anarchy.

It could be dropped—once or twice, for comedic effect, but all you'd get was a dinged-up dispenser and everybody in the mess hall wondering why the ninjas were suddenly getting clumsy. Ditto throwing it: while hurling a metal box at someone's head was tempting, it was also very difficult to pass off as either an accident or a direct consequence of the duty being assigned, and ninja creed dictated that they had to be more subtle than just flat-out braining somebody for giving them a boring duty. Snake-Eyes, who despite being one of the world's most deadliest men had the kind of calm that can only be acquired by growing up in a peaceful, loving farm family, managed to amuse himself by seeing how quickly he could get done with his half of the mess. Storm Shadow, who had the kind of calm that can only be acquired by growing up in a dojo full of shadowy assassins and being sent into Vietnam because said assassins thought it would "settle him down a bit," was not so easily distracted.

By the time they had hunted down and filled every dispenser in the Pit, more than a half-hour had passed and Storm Shadow was getting noticeably irritated. Dull, repetitive work with no potential for chaos was anathema to him. Worse, he was only doing that dull, repetitive work because of an incident stemming from his notable lack of control in the first place.

Which meant that, when they returned to the kitchen, Storm Shadow was not feeling terribly charitable towards the whole endeavor.

And what Annie had failed to figure was that a ninja doesn't need any props to cause chaos.

After the dispensers, they refilled every salt and pepper shaker in the Pit. Then they alphabetized the canned foods.

By the time they were finished with the cans, Annie was beginning to feel downright confident. The more talkative of the two ninjas was visibly sulky, but he seemed unable to find any way to retaliate without making himself look like an idiot. Snake-Eyes was, as ever, silent and stolid—and of course, much harder to figure. Annie would have been more comfortable if she could have seen both her KP monkeys' faces, but even after only a few days in the Pit, she understood that asking Snake-Eyes to unmask was a major no-no. Besides, Storm Shadow's expression was sour enough for both of them. She cracked a bit of a smug smile as she ordered them to go and make sure every bottle of sauce and juice in the fridge had its cap screwed on tight.

Then Storm Shadow smiled back.

Annie froze. For a moment, she swore a bucket of cold water had been dumped down the back of her neck. It wasn't a big smile—she had never yet seen Storm Shadow do anything that could be described as a _grin—_but it was all the worse for that, small and secret and just a little bit sly. She glanced across the room at the industrial-sized walk-in fridge, where she knew that four dozen bottles of various descriptions were being stored. Most of them would be transported to the new Pit in refrigerated trucks, and if their caps weren't on tight, something might spill or spoil. It seemed innocuous enough, but-

Her eyes narrowed. "Something funny, sergeant?" she said. The white-clad ninja just smiled back, and Annie mentally called on the Spirit of the Great God Beach Head to keep from twitching. That same smile had previously presaged four (4) very painful sparring sessions, three (3) instances of making Annie certain she had swallowed her own lungs out of sheer exhaustion, and one (1) mental promise to get the hell out of the service as soon as her tour was up. However, she was determined not to be beaten. It was just a smile. She still had the upper hand.

"All right, if you're having such a good time, then you can put that cheerful disposition to work." Annie checked her clipboard, mentally ordering herself not to freak out. People smiled all the time, after all. "Once you're finished with the bottles, you can take the latest batch of dirty aprons down to the laundry. Remember, we need to have this place spic-and-span before we pull out tomorrow."

"The laundry?" Storm Shadow said, raising an eyebrow.

" . . I know you're not deaf, sergeant. Dusty swears that you can hear what color of undershorts someone's got on."

"The laundry." Storm Shadow nodded to Snake-Eyes, who responded with a complicated gesture and nodded back. Was he . . . was he grinning too? Annie's eyes narrowed. It was hard to tell under the mask. She had _never _seen Sgt. Snake-Eyes grin.

"You're right, brother. They _do _have ironing boards down there."

"Planning something?" Annie said rather loudly. If she hoped to disrupt their plans, it didn't work. Storm Shadow just gave her an innocent-as-a-lamb face and headed off towards the walk-in fridge and the dozens of bottles that awaited them.

As soon as they were gone, Annie leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath, her hands over her eyes. The laundry. She hadn't been planning to send them to the laundry. She'd had everything figured out in the kitchen, all the angles, but she hadn't even thought about . . . dammit! They hadn't even _done anything yet, _and she was already worrying! Deep breaths, girl. Annie tried to focus, remember Storm Shadow's sour look from earlier. They were probably just covering up how pissed they were that she had foiled their plan.

But still, the little voice at the back of her mind pestered her. It wasn't the same voice that had persuaded her to try this plan; no, this was a different voice, the voice every waitress possesses. The one that says _Table 4 looks ready to dine-and-dash _and _No, no matter how many times he's tried to grope your butt, you are _not _slick enough to make dumping hot soup on him look like an accident. _The voice of intelligent self-preservation. Annie wasn't very familiar with it.

Glancing around the kitchen, her eyes lit on a well-known figure. Despite being a desert trooper, Dusty Tadur did indeed specialize in refrigerator repair, and he was currently inspecting one of the kitchen's chest freezers in preparation for tomorrow's big shut-down. He'd been in Joe for a while, and he seemed not to be too insane. Annie scooted over towards him.

"Dusty?" she said cautiously.

"Yeah?" came the voice, echoing slightly due to the fact that he had his head crammed into a freezer. "What's up?"

"I just told the ninjas to take something to the laundry."

Dusty pulled his head out of the freezer. He was wearing his usual desert cammies, but though the sheikh-like headdress was gone, the goggles were still lodged haphazardly on his forehead. A thin layer of frost had formed on the lenses.

"Y'know," he said conversationally, "you're going to die soon."

Annie groaned a little. "Sarcasm isn't going to help. Please, Dusty. I had them under control before. Everything was going _great. _Tell me what I did wrong just now."

The desert trooper paused for a moment, considering. "You did do one thing wrong," he conceded.

"Yes?"

"You got the ninjas on KP."

Annie growled. "I had them beat. They shouldn't be smiling. I shouldn't be _freaking out _because they're smiling!" She made a fist and thumped it against the wall, glaring at nothing. "I hate this. I won! I shouldn't be getting nervous just because he grinned."

"Storm Shadow, huh?"

"Yeah."

"That just means you're smart. It's never good when Storm smiles." Dusty paused for a moment, wiping the frost off of his goggles. "It's like monkeys."

" . . . monkeys."

"Yep. Fear-grinning. Sometimes shows they're afraid, sometimes a method of showing dominance."

Annie tried very hard not to lose her temper. "Look . . . Dusty, I don't think _monkeys _are going to help me!"

"Sorry, Short Stack. I'm just the refrigerator guy right now." He ducked back into the chest freezer. Annie groaned and put a hand to her forehead, where a mother of a headache was forming.

Her eyes fixed on the other side of the kitchen, where the door to the huge walk-in fridge was just a crack open. The ninjas would be in there right now, screwing bottle lids back on. And maybe talking among themselves? She steadied herself and, trying not to breathe loudly, crept across the floor towards the fridge. Storm Shadow might have good hearing, but between the bustle of the kitchen and Annie's sniper-school sneakiness, she was willing to bet she could at least manage to get close. Not daring to even twitch, she planted herself against the door and put her ear to the crack.

There was a rattle of glass, and what sounded like a dog. No, not a dog—a strange huffing sound. It took her a moment to realize that it was Sgt. Snake-Eyes. Sgt. Snake-Eyes, the bacon-eating walking weapon man, was laughing. And Storm Shadow was too, making a sound that was less a laugh and more an eerie cackle.

"It's a good plan, brother," Storm Shadow said, catching his breath. He was whispering, apparently trying to avoid being overheard. Annie bit her lip. "Remember the last time?"

Another strange huffing laugh from the quieter of the ninja, and then a silent gap apparently occupied by a flurry of sign language. (Annie mentally promised herself that she would buy an ASL dictionary _tomorrow.) _Storm Shadow cackled again, the sound muffled by what sounded like his hand over his mouth. "Do you think they'll even let her stay on base after this?" Another pause. "You're one to talk, brother. You remember what you did to that greenie who tried to catch Scarlett in the shower . . ." Pause. "Are you kidding? The general won't do anything to us. A quartermaster versus his two best commandos." Pause. "Now is not the time to develop a conscience, brother. If you wanted to be nice, you shouldn't have suggested the ironing boards." Pause. "Well, if she won't send us to the laundry after all, we can still use the baking pans."

_Oh God. _Annie flattened herself against the wall, blocking out the rest of the conversation. That was it. They _did _have a plan, a big plan, one that could conceivably get her thrown out of G.I. Joe. She didn't know what happened to you if you got kicked from a super-secret 100% classified unit, but after meeting the robots and the guy who carried the laser gun, she was ready to guess that it involved brainwashing. And Area 51. She scuttled away from the door and hid behind her usual station, trying to ignore the bustling of the kitchen all around her and taking deep breaths.

"Dusty?" she said aloud. The desert trooper wasn't paying attention (or so she guessed, given that he had disappeared completely inside the freezer) but she had to say something. "What could they possibly do with an ironing board? Talk to me, Dusty. I'm scared."

"He can't hear you," Storm Shadow said. _Right behind her. _

_ Again._

"JESUS fucking CHRIST!"

Annie's shout carried. Heads turned, trays dropped, people stared. In the motor pool, Cover Girl looked up from the engine she was trying to pay attention to, and Beach Head looked up from the Cover Girl he was paying attention to. A mechanic paused as he clambered out of the cockpit of an AWEstriker, Whiskey Down dropped a can of peaches and swore, and a few levels above on the desert flats, two long-eared fennec foxes peered out of their burrow and wondered what the hell was going on now.

The ninjas were unruffled. "We finished the bottles," Storm Shadow reported, smiling coolly. "May we go to the laundry now, private?"

"Okay. Okay. Fine." Annie ran a hand over her face. "Just . . . look. Just tell me what you're planning, okay?"

Picture of innocence, as ever. "We're not planning anything, private. You told us to take the aprons to the-"

"What did you say about ironing boards earlier?"

"What about ironing boards?"

"You. Mentioned. Ironing boards."

"A laundry room has ironing boards, doesn't it?"

"Why would you _care _that there were ironing boards?"

"I like my uniforms ironed. Much more comfortable that way."

"Funny, because I've never seen you with creases on your ninja pajamas." Annie's grip on the edge of the counter was white-knuckled. "I don't even care at this point. Just tell me. And. Stop. _Smiling."_

The grin was wider than ever, and Annie thought she was going to scream. "What were we planning to do with the ironing boards, private?"

"Yes."

"You certain you want to hear, private?"

"Yes."

"Absolutely positive?"

She swallowed. It suddenly occurred to her that the ninja was only average height, but he sure didn't look it. Right then, Storm Shadow looked very, very tall, and his eyes were glinting in the harsh fluorescents of the kitchen. The diner in Illinois seemed a world away. " . . . yes."

"Nothing."

There was a moment of silence. Then Annie swallowed again and said "Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

" . . . you mean you're not telling me?" she hazarded, her voice hoarse. Somebody laughed in the background, and Annie wanted to punch them. "Why not? I won't—I mean, I don't mean—I'm not the one who put you on KP! Why are you torturing me?"

Storm Shadow shrugged. "No, I mean there was nothing we were planning. We made it all up."

For a moment, Annie's brain refused to believe that. "Dusty just told me! Ninjas can do_ anything. _What are you _planning? _Tell me!"

The white-clad ninja yawned. "We were planning, Short Stack, to get you back for making us do useless tasks by tormenting you about a nonexistent prank. In short, we baited you and let your own fevered imagination do the work." He glanced at his watch, and another smile lit up his features. "Wouldn't you know! Breakfast is over. Come on, sword-brother."

He slid calmly past the stunned Annie, who was having trouble processing everything and had experienced what a later generation would refer to as a Mental Blue Screen of Death. Storm Shadow neatly shucked off the petunia-pink gloves and laid them, gentle as a lamb, on Annie's head. "Remember," he said, patting the stunned quartermaster on the shoulder. "Hand-to-hand is at two o'clock today."

And he was gone.

* * *

Years would go by. Teams would be disbanded and reformed. And almost a decade later, when Senior Quartermaster Anne Gorshin would be faced with a young recruit by the name of Sean Collins, she would take one look at him and turn to her staff. And she would say: "That boy is _not _coming into my kitchen."


	10. FunSized

**Author's Note: **A little moment with two people stuck in a kitchen.

The idea of the item abandoned in the walk-in fridge was the result of mad Twitter humor between Annie, Karama9, Dragogirl13, CrystalofEllinon, and wolfyhound. Blame them. And feel free to draw your own conclusions as to what it was doing there.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter 10: Fun-Sized**

The day . . . proceeded. That was about all Annie could say for it. The sun continued its inexorable march across the sky, the shifts changed, Pit security wasn't breached, and Annie continued to draw breath.

Though after her two o'clock hand-to-hand session, it was a near thing.

At least Pitfall conditions meant that meals were easier to manage. After the relatively normal breakfast, all nonessential foods were packed away for transit; only the perishables that they absolutely couldn't transport were left out, to be used up as best the cooks could manage. Annie spent most of the afternoon dragging her way through the process of boxing up the kitchen utensils, at the same time helping to supervise the small brigade of greenshirts who had been tasked with packing the Pit's three hundred sets of cutlery and dishes. The Joes would be eating off paper plates that evening.

Lunch was easy: sandwiches, and lots of them. Dinner was tougher. A lot of the leftovers that they had available were the tail-ends of perishables—some vegetables, some meat, a few seasonings. After a bit of thought, Whiskey Down authorized the unpacking of several ten-pound bags of rice, and the quartermasters began to assemble the odds and ends into something resembling chop suey. This didn't go over very well—Tunnel Rat was overheard to remark that "_shap sui" _could be translated as "garbage bits" from Cantonese, but he'd never considered it applicable until now—but it kept body and soul together, as Annie's mother liked to say. And there was enough for everyone, which by the third-grade level that Annie's brain was operating on, made it a success.

By twenty-hundred hours, there were only a few people left in the kitchen. Annie was checking the equipment manifestos and checking off that all the portable items had been packed up; there would be a complete set of kitchen gear waiting in the new base, but somebody had to go over everything and wouldn't you know it, that fell to the most junior quartermaster. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a few figures in the usual green and tan cammies—mostly greenies milling around, cleaning and sweeping.

"You need to loosen up," someone said calmly.

Right.

Behind.

Her.

Annie squawked and whirled, instinctively swinging the clipboard as if she were swatting the world's largest fly. Or in this case the world's largest Dusty, who jumped almost as high as she did and barely ducked the ballistic office supply.

As she realized that it was not, in fact, a ninja, Annie let out a breath and retrieved the dropped clipboard. "Christ almighty," she said, rubbing a hand over her face, "Sergeant, please don't do that. Ever."

"I thought you'd heard me." Dusty shrugged one shoulder, as ambivalent as ever. Nearly being brained by a list of kitchen equipment didn't seem to faze him. "You all right?"

"I'll live, I think. What are you doing here?"

The desert trooper jerked a thumb at the industrial-sized walk-in fridge, the only piece of equipment not yet decommissioned. Both the door to the fridge and his t-shirt were spotted with brownish grease, and he was carrying a wrench in one hand. "Removing the freon canisters. Nobody knows how long this place is going to be shut down, and those things are considered a biohazard threat."

"So you're here in your unofficial capacity. Okay." Annie's hands were still twitching a little, both with exhaustion and as the aftermath of an extremely stressful day. What a way to tell her to calm down—sneak up behind her, just like the spectre of pointy disobedient mind-fucking death that she'd had to deal with before-

Then, incongruously, a thought struck her, and she began to smile. "Wait a minute," she said. "You're here . . . as a refrigerator repairman. And you, wearing a tight t-shirt and carrying a stereotypically manly piece of equipment, decide to sneak up behind me and tell me I need to loosen up?"

She leaned back against the counter, clipboard in hand, and laughed. "Oh God, Dusty," she managed to say as she struggled to catch her breath, "I think I've seen this scenario before. If only you were a pizza delivery boy or a plumber—it would be the perfect weird ending to a horribly weird day."

Dusty cracked a grin and shrugged again, crossing his arms as Annie went off into another fit of giggling. "Feeling better?" he said as she subsided.

". . . yeah. I think I do." The quartermaster took a deep breath and mopped the tears of laughter out of her eyes. "Sorry about that. What can I do for you, sergeant?"

"I was actually going to tell you that I found something. Kitchen crew has to report all found items to the higher-ups and the head quartermaster, don't they?"

Annie raised an eyebrow. "Actually, yes, we do. How'd you know that?"

"I've been on KP a lot."

"Really? I thought you spent most of your time in the infirmary. What the heck did you do?" The minute the words were out of her mouth, she stopped. Exhaustion, and the strange relationship between quartermaster private and KP-monkey sergeant, had made her forget regulations for a moment. "Wait—never mind. Sorry, sergeant. None of my business."

"Nah, I don't mind." Dusty stepped away from the counter, leading her towards the deactivated refrigerator. "For future reference—never take a dare from Short-Fuze. The man plays dirty. And Duke wasn't too pleased with having his childhood affinity for gospel choir become common knowledge."

Annie tried, and failed, to picture the broad-shouldered blond Top in a choir robe. "Should I be hearing this?"

"Common knowledge is common knowledge." Dusty stopped in front of the refrigerator, bent down, and rooted around. Several of the heavy shelves had been braced in deep grooves on the floor of the refrigerator unit, and when those shelves had been removed, a whole wealth of small lost objects had been found collected in the grooves. Loose change, bullets . . . Annie's eyebrow raised when she saw the object Dusty produced.

"A ka-bar?"

"It was wedged in there, way at the back. I'm not surprised it got overlooked." The desert trooper handed her the ka-bar. It was a nice piece of equipment: well-worn, but obviously well-cared-for, with a high-end leather sheath that had seen a lot more wear than most. The initials _C.K. _had been embossed in the leather, along with a manufacturer's logo.

"Nice," Annie said, taking the ka-bar and examining it. "I didn't even know Ferragamo _made_ knife accessories. C.K.?"

"Probably Cover Girl."

"Why would Cover Girl leave a knife in the freezer?"

"In this unit, it's best not to ask." Dusty shot a glance at her. "Take the ninjas, for example." Annie's eyes narrowed, and Dusty raised an eyebrow at that. "Something wrong?"

"I don't like that word."

"Got a grudge against the dictionary?"

"I don't like what it's become." Annie crossed her arms and, out of nervous habit, shot a glance at the ceiling tiles. They were all still in place.

"Care to elaborate?"

"It seems like a . . ." The quartermaster groped for words. "A get-out-of-jail-free card. Everybody looks the other way because they're so effective and have such a useful rep. Store tea on top of the shelves? Ninja. Ignore dress codes? Ninja. Terrify a QM? Who cares, they're a ninja. Break out of the infirmary so often that the medics have to _weld a grate to the ceiling? _Ninja. And you heard what they almost did to that prisoner. How long before it becomes 'Maimed a greenshirt? Ninja!'"

Dusty didn't frown; Annie didn't think he knew how. But his smile slipped a couple of notches. "Storm and Snake don't need me to talk for them," he said, running a hand through his loose blond hair. "But I think you should have fair warning.

"Ninja is a stupid word." Her surprise must have shown on her face, because for a moment, Dusty's grin reappeared. "It's stupid because people have these ideas that go with ninja. You should see some of those movies that Scarlett drags out and makes Snake and Storm watch. Invisibility, dragons, stuff like that. So when it's got that association with stupid things, it's harder to take them seriously. Or worse, you forget that it's a title people earn."

He paused and absentmindedly wiped a bit of grease off his hands with a rag, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he was talking about . . . well . . . ninja. Annie bit her lip, unwilling to admit that he might have had a point. She had been just a little too terrified that morning to be mature about the whole business.

"Snake is crazy," Dusty added after a moment. "So's Storm. But they're good commandos. Saved our bacon a lot of the time. Sure, maybe the Joes are a little freewheeling. But—" And for a moment, Annie might have seen a flash of temper on that amiable face "—just because they act out on their enemies doesn't mean they'll do the same to their friends. You should fear 'em, sure. But you have to respect 'em too. And that means knowing that they wouldn't put your rookie ass in danger."

What might have been annoyance vanished almost before it had appeared, and Annie wasn't even sure she had seen it. It was just Dusty again: bit of a grin, blond hair bleached almost white, tan lines on his face where he wore his goggles in the desert.

For a minute, she couldn't think of anything to say. Dusty turned his back and, humming an aimless tune, opened a panel on the refrigerator's motor and went to work with the wrench.

"Fair warning?" she said finally.

"Yep." He didn't turn around, but his stance was loose and his attitude relaxed. "I was out in the desert with a buddy once—Mainframe. Good guy. There was a kid talking back to him, saying he wasn't a real soldier because he worked with computers. I knew different, but I let it be. Mainframe didn't need defending. And neither do the ninjas." He paused for a moment to loosen a particularly reticent, greasy screw. "The difference is that Mainframe doesn't have half a dozen sticks up his ass labeled 'Clan honor,' 'Respect for the sensei,' 'Proper discipline,' and probably 'Don't look at me funny.' Doing Mainframe's job right means hacking a computer. Doing Snakes' job right means teaching you how to turn some guy inside-out using two spoons and a dirty look."

For a few long moments, the only sound in the kitchen was the squeaking of Dusty's wrench and the distant scrape of another greenshirt with a broom. Then Annie drew in a long breath.

"Thanks, Dusty," she said. "That's good to know. But it doesn't help when they're putting all that skill towards making me miserable."

"Maybe you just need to learn to curb your temper." Annie glared at him, but Dusty remained unruffled. "Don't shoot the messenger, private. I'm just saying."

He disappeared back into the freezer, and Annie leaned against the wall and drew in a long breath. Be calm. Be calm.

He had a point, she had to admit. The ninjas were . . . effective. Supposedly, anyway, and he'd been there much longer than she had. Dusty would know. But the idea of freewheeling agents like that rankled. Annie was under no illusions about her particular skills; there was only one thing that qualified her for membership in this elite unit, and that was her ability to cook breakfast really, really fast. This wasn't the kind of thing legends were made of. If there were no rules, then there was nothing to prevent everyone else from being as incredible as they could . . . And that left Annie Gorshin, Short Stack, as just one more cook cleaning up after the men and women who made history. The thought rankled.

But she had to have goals. And she had to have some kind of pride in what she _could _do, or she knew she would go insane. And maybe setting herself against two of the deadliest warriors on the planet wasn't the way to do that.

"You're right," she said. "And I might still wash out. But I appreciate the heads-up."

"Just don't spread it around the rest of the greenshirts, would you?" Dusty said, glancing up. The brown grease had spread all over his hands again, and had even transferred to a smear on his cheek, but it didn't seem to dampen his spirits. "I put forty bucks on six washouts this week, and it helps if they're all demoralized."

" . . . You know, I was almost feeling good until you said that."

"Sorry. Spend too much time around Beach Head and you get into the habit of sadism."

Annie smiled a little, thinking back on that morning's adventure. Up until the ironing board incident, she had to admit that it had been going rather well. And the sour look on Storm Shadow's face . . . "I hear you on that."


	11. Fresh Plate

**Author's Note: **A convoy, a long-awaited briefing, and Annie learns a few things about who needs smacking.

This is a transition chapter, and since not a lot happens on a convoy heading places—especially not from a quartermaster's point of view—it's a little disorganized, and focuses mainly on character development. Next one will bring us back into the plot, I promise.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter 11: Fresh Plate**

An hour before dawn, they rolled out. Sixty-seven full-time Joes, the number that had been on base at the time of the attack. Forty-one greenshirts. Thirty members of the support corps, the ones that hadn't been hired locally and hadn't failed their security checks. Too many vehicles to count, barely scratching the surface of the massive equipment transfer that would take place on the sly over the next few weeks. More than a ton of assorted foodstuffs, three tons of spare parts for ground vehicles, and four hundred sandwiches that the quartermasters had stayed up most of the night assembling for the trip.

Annie was curled up in her corner of troop transport number seven, a notepad balanced on her knees, scribbling vaguely and trying to keep awake. Somebody had to stay alert in the back of the truck, and she was the most junior of the quartermasters; all the others had dropped off right away. She chewed her lip thoughtfully as she surveyed the scene, noting that S.O.S.'s head had sagged onto Eighty-Six's shoulder. Both were snoring. _And me without a camcorder, _she thought, blinking and rubbing her eyes.

Well, thank God for coffee, that was all she was going to say. Most of her things were packed and neatly stowed with the required military precision, but along with the notepad, she had brought along a battered old thermos filled with triple-reheated French Roast. By the time she was a third of the way through, her brain was beginning to get back on track, albeit reluctantly.

The sun was starting to rise, and Annie couldn't resist peering out the back of the truck and watching it. All she knew about the location of the Pit—the old Pit, she should say—was that it was out in the desert somewhere, and she had spent so much of her first week worrying and hurrying that she had never really gotten the opportunity to just look. Now she watched, breathing in the cool damp morning air, as the sun rose over the wasteland. Streaks of orange and purple and shocking pink glowed on the horizon, lending an odd primrose tint to the normally gray expanse and washing the whole scene in soft warmth. Later, during a normal Pit day, there would be dry heat and sweat and some pretty harsh words for a PT instructor who somehow managed to construct the only mudpits within two hundred miles _and _make the experience of getting wet in a desert miserable. For now, though, the morning dew was still on the ground and the world seemed a calmer and more serene kind of place.

Serene, that is, once you managed to ignore the fact that the troop transport directly behind you was being driven hell-for-leather by Cpl. Cover Girl, who appeared to have a grudge against the speed limit. That was hard to ignore.

Their truck gave a lurch as it went over a bump in the road, and the sleeping quartermasters were jerked awake. S.O.S. let out an undignified yelp as he was thrown out of place, narrowly avoiding landing with his face in Eighty-Six's lap. Chopper, the burly ex-biker and sandwich specialist, snorted out a laugh that quickly turned into a hacking cough. "It's too fucking early," he mumbled, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

"You mean too late," corrected Shingle with a sigh. He leaned back against the inside wall of the truck and closed his eyes, apparently trying to will the surrounding distractions away so that he could get back to sleep. It wasn't working, and when Annie offered him her thermos of coffee, he took it with a long-suffering look.

Eighty-Six, exhibiting the same charming lack of regard for boundaries that had made her such a fountain of useful gossip on Annie's very first day, had gone back to sleep with S.O.S.'s leg as her own personal pillow. The thin, twitchy young quartermaster was apparently torn between pushing her away and enjoying the fact that a rather attractive woman had chosen to take a nap on him, but his own exhaustion quickly won over both and he promptly dozed off with his head slumped over Eighty-Six's. Chopper, unwilling to accept the fact that the day had begun, finished hacking up a lung and then rolled off the bench, curling himself up between two sizable boxes of supplies and covering his head with his jacket. Whiskey Down, the lucky bastard, was riding with the officers.

Only Murphy seemed to be fully awake and alert. Of all the quartermasters assigned to this bizarre posting, Annie knew him the least. He was an old-timer, but not exactly old: lean and hard, whipcord thin with wind-tanned skin and red-blond hair now fading and streaked with gray, he looked hungry and usually was. He was a meat and starch man, hence his name (diner lingo for potato, although for all Annie knew it might have actually been his name) and he accidentally fulfilled the Irish stereotype by leavening his working day with illicit whiskey. Annie had seen the bottle occasionally during her first couple of days, tucked into a cabinet near Murphy's workstation; he didn't like anybody going near it, but he never got drunk or even tipsy on duty, so nobody gave him too much grief about it.

"You look like hell," he observed briefly, but without malice. Annie sighed and rearranged herself on her seat, cradling notebook and thermos to her chest.

"I feel like it," she responded. "All the surprises have just worn me out. Unless there's another robot attack, I'm done."

"I know the feeling." Murphy turned his head, shooting a glance at the lightening desert sky outside.

Annie drew her knees up. She recognized that look—almost world-weary. "How long have you been with this unit?" she said softly.

"Since it was formed. I was one of the first 92Gs they had—back when it was just me, Whiskey Down, and Chuck."

"Chuck?"

"Short for Ground Chuck. He picked it himself."

"That doesn't sound like a good name to have."

"You're telling me. He got shot in the first invasion of Staten Island."

Annie blinked. "Invasion? Staten Island?"

"Long story. Long, long, long story." Murphy slipped a hip flask out of his pocket and took a sip. "General Hawk will probably cover that when you guys get your orientation speech. But let me just say, this is not the first emergency evacuation I've been through. We Pitfall about every two years here."

"That . . ." Annie frowned a little, blinking rapidly through her exhaustion and growing headache. "That's information I could've used before I joined up."

He eyed her. "You signed the waivers. You got the information package. Got nobody to blame now."

"Hey, I try to look on the bright side. In a bureaucracy, there's _always _someone to blame." The last two words were half-stifled by a massive yawn, making Murphy grin a little.

"So what do you think of this crew? Has your first injury yet?" he asked. Annie, still working through the tail-end of her yawn, couldn't quite reply right away. Instead, she stretched out and took a deep breath before responding—good thing, too, because it gave her time to consider her answer.

"That isn't expected, is it?" she said finally. "I mean, we're just the 92Gs. The fact that any of us saw combat at all was a fluke."

Murphy stretched. "You're naïve, 'Stack," he said, without malice. "Remember? Pitfall every two years. And that doesn't count the field missions."

"All right, now you're just yanking my chain," Annie said grumpily. "Do I look like a combat engineer to you? We might get posted in dangerous spots, but we're here to run the mess, not flush out insurgents or defuse IEDs."

"This is G.I. Joe. _Everyone _is on the front lines." Murphy stretched himself, his neck and joints cracking audibly. His voice took on a theatrically solemn and sonorous quality. "Hear me, Short Stack. It is my prediction that, within a year's time, you will be called to serve your country in the field. And yea, someone close to you will betray you, and sergeant major Beach Head will fall in battle. There will be rains of frogs and a plague of boiled cattle."

"I never thought I'd say this, but I don't think you've had enough to drink." Annie shook her head at the thin quartermaster. He opened his mouth to respond, but his words were swallowed up by a massive yawn of his own. "Go back to sleep, Murphy."

He snorted softly. "No chance of that. Too awake now. You get some sleep, 'Stack; I'll take over for you."

For a moment, Annie hesitated. But one part of the soldiers' creed was not to relinquish your post _unless_ relieved by a designated authority, and Murphy—a first sergeant—had rank and experience on her. Relieved, she relented and curled up, pillowing her head on her folded arms. The jolting truck soon lulled her into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The convoy rolled to a temporary halt around midday, making its stop in what appeared to be an old campground off the main highway. There was, to Annie's absolute lack of surprise, a tanker truck of fuel already waiting for them; after the robots and purple outfits, the kind of pull needed to order a fuel tanker out in the middle of nowhere was practically nothing.

She and the other quartermasters quickly fell in, distributing water bottles and the premade sandwiches among the other troops. Though she didn't dare ask directly, the Joes' behavior seemed to confirm at least part of what Murphy had said: though bored and annoyed, none of them seemed surprised by the fact that they'd been uprooted in just over forty-eight hours, or that none of them knew where they were going. (Glancing around, Annie could surmise exactly one thing about their geographical location: it was deserty.)

In fact, the major issue seemed to be boredom. A few of the Joes started a pickup football game in the middle of the otherwise deserted campground, chucking an empty water bottle back and forth until one side accused the other of cheating. Rule #37b-"Presence of a ninja on the field of play is prohibited at all times"-was cited, a few punches were thrown, and Law stuck his head out of his own truck and shouted that the next person to try anything would be on Order poop patrol for a week. That seemed to be a threat with teeth in it, and the ruckus quieted down somewhat. Annie was watching a spirited debate between Storm Shadow and the referee, Airtight ("You do realize that under American law, this is discrimination, right?"), when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

The camaraderie among members of the support divisions was well-documented, but some amount of empathy was also extended to Inkblot, General Hawk's long-suffering aide. According to Eighty-Six, Inkblot had been one of the first occupants of the original Pit, and served as a combination executive secretary and inconspicuous shadow in most matters. He apparently found a kind of Zen calm in paperwork, considering a universe that had its Form 9207s filed was a universe in order. For this reason, Inkblot had a special loathing reserved for Sgt. Major Beach Head, who apparently "forgot" his paperwork a lot. Annie could sympathize.

"Short Stack, the general wants to see you," Inkblot said. Annie felt a surge of worry, and for a moment, a small smile appeared on the aide's face. "You and eight other greenshirts. You're overdue for a briefing."

"Holy cow, the the mythical briefing," Annie said, stretching a little. "When is that?"

"Five minutes. The general's truck."

That got her attention, and Annie did the proverbial deer-in-headlights freeze. "Seriously?" she said. "Do I have to—I mean, do I need to bring anything? I was cited in the report about the captive, but I thought the paperwork was on file-"

"The paperwork is on file." Inkblot apparently took pity on the alarmed quartermaster; it was no secret that, in a normal unit, a PFC 92G wouldn't be seeing the general much unless she was handing him a tray, and she could guess that her skittishness was obvious. "The only thing the general is expecting is for people to sit down, shut up, and listen."

Annie offered him a nervous grin. "Okay, I can do that. Thanks."

As Inkblot darted off down the line of vehicles, Annie sat down on the edge of the truck's open back and shook her head. In addition to putting her in the position of almost killing a man (and doing a piss-poor job of it, too. "'I am become death, devourer of worlds,' I don't _quite _think") and acquainting her with a subspecies of human being that enjoyed crawling around in airshafts, this posting was making her paranoid. General Hawk, at least, she trusted—who wouldn't? He was the one all the Joes took orders from, and if her disastrous KP experience had taught her anything, it was that Joes didn't like being told what to do.

It occurred to her only as she was clambering down from the truck and dusting off her BDUs that she had mentally referred to Gen. Clayton Abernathy by his code name. That worried her, though for the life of her she couldn't understand why.

* * *

Under most circumstances, one would expect a general in the United States military to travel with a bit of style; rank had its privileges, and Annie had cooked for enough officer's club banquets to know that some sorts were inclined to indulge in those privileges. Looking at General Hawk now, though, Annie had the distinct impression that his sheer amount of testosterone would dissolve luxury on contact.

She had seen him in full uniform during her first day in the old Pit, but that was about it, and now he looked like . . . well, like a fighting man. He was even wearing a battered old leather jacket and visible dog tags, something Annie had never seen on any general inside the United States. More than that, though, Hawk radiated toughness: he was tense and extremely alert, but the tension and nervous energy was all coiled inside him, and he never seemed to twitch or raise his voice. He definitely looked like someone a ninja would take orders from.

Lacking an office, and requiring someplace private for the briefing, Inkblot ushered the nine gathered greenshirts into one of the eighteen-wheelers that was being used to transport the more top-secret vehicles. As Annie's eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw the general seated in the driver's seat of what looked like a modified Jeep . . . if, by modified, you mean "with added laser cannons." He looked up as the group filed in and stood at attention.

"At ease," he said, and waved his hand to the crates of motor parts stacked and lashed in place nearby. "Find a place to sit. We'll be moving out soon, but you can go back to your assigned trucks when we make our next stop."

Possibly out of herd instinct, Annie gravitated towards the greenshirts she knew best. She'd met all of them at one point or another by now, usually while giving them bacon, but Boom Town and Rabbi Lee had been in the same hall with her during the invasion. Once you've peeled gas masks off dead bodies and robots, you feel a certain kind of bond with somebody. The sniper and the explosives man made room for her on a crate labeled "Brindley Turbines & Manifolds (Asst)" and Annie got as comfortable as she could. Murphy's pessimistic talk about front lines had left a bad taste in her mouth, and she couldn't help wondering just what had been kept back from them that was about to be revealed.

General Hawk surveyed the group. He looked tired, Annie thought, and the half-lit interior of the truck threw deep shadows into the hollows of his cheeks and eyes. He surveyed the nine of them alertly, though, and Annie got the uncomfortable feeling that she was being X-rayed.

"Boom Town," he said, and the greenshirt in question jumped. "Rabbi Lee, Gaijin, Dutch Irish, Zipline, Mothra, Night Train, Short Stack, and Kilowatt. Welcome to G.I. Joe."

He shifted out of the seat of the Jeep, instead leaning against the hood and bracing himself as the eighteen-wheeler rumbled to life. "Normally, I prefer to give these kinds of briefings in an office, but as you can tell, these are extenuating circumstances. I hope none of you get carsick." There was a round of nervous laughter from the assembled greenshirts, and Hawk nodded.

"When you first joined this unit, you were told that this was a highly-classified group of specialists assembled for the purpose of dealing with extremely delicate, high-risk operations. This is still true. However, as you likely learned on your first day of hand-to-hand, there are a few details that were left out of that initial briefing." Hawk leaned forward a little, his arms still braced against the hood of the Jeep, his eyes sharp. "You weren't told everything before because we had to be certain that you were the kind of person capable of dealing with the unexpected. G.I. Joe is the best of the best, and that's no joke. Anybody who can't face up to something like Snake-Eyes or Beach Head doesn't belong in this unit."

When he put it like that, the torture the ninjas had put Annie through in the kitchen almost sounded like an accomplishment. Annie thought this for roughly two-tenths of a second before lapsing back into grudging dislike of said ninjas—although she had to admit to the general's point where Beach Head was concerned. She'd occasionally gotten the sneaking feeling that he was a little smarter than he owned up to, and the idea of the sergeant major being part of a test made sense. And surviving Beach Head was _definitely _an accomplishment.

That raised her spirits a little, despite Murphy's downer attitude. For a moment, she thought about her brother Kevin, who was four years older than her and took a dim view of her career. _'Glorified frycook for a bunch of grunts,' huh, Kevin? I've got a sergeant major I want you to meet . . . _

"The circumstances that G.I. Joe faces," General Hawk was saying. Annie quickly dragged her thoughts back to the here and now "-are a lot stranger than most people would think. Some of you have already encountered Cobra's robots: the B.A.T.s, Battle Armored Troopers. Standard equipment in any manned assault. Others might have witnessed one of our prisoners apparently shapeshifting." As the eighteen-wheeler turned slightly, pulling back onto the highway, General Hawk tucked his hands into his pockets and surveyed the group calmly. "Any questions?"

There was another moment of silence. Then Dutch Irish, a thin, nervous-looking type with blazing red hair and freckles, raised his hand.

"Permission to speak, sir?"

"This is an informal briefing, Dutch, you don't need to raise your hand. Permission granted."

Dutch Irish swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing in the hollow of his long throat. "Sir . . . is it always Cobra?"

"A good question. No, it isn't just Cobra." The general nodded again at them. "There are plenty of covert ops, terrorist groups, and international crises that won't involve any kind of snake. Cobra, however, is unique in that it's our problem alone. They have excellent public relations and several semi-legal front operations, and G.I. Joe is the only group really equipped to run them to ground."

Rabbi Lee was next. "What do they want, sir?"

"Power." The general's voice was flat on that word. "By any means necessary. Do any of you remember hearing about the civil war in Frusenhagen?" Nods all around. "Cobra. Diplomatic crisis over the Nazi survivor in Sierra Gordo?" More nods, now slightly apprehensive. "Cobra. Three captured commandos thrown into the Borovian gulag? Everyone remembers that one." Nobody even bothered nodding this time around, and General Hawk smiled just a little wryly. "Getting things from the news only gives you half the story, because we're not the kind of unit that can tell everyone what operations we're running.

"When we've arrived at the new base, you'll all be issued second-level security clearance and given access to the available files on Cobra's structure and leadership. I suggest you study them. Knowing your enemy puts you halfway towards beating them."

Seated on her crate with Boom Town and Rabbi Lee, listening to the nervous questions from the greenshirts and the swift, sure answers from General Hawk, Annie found herself thinking back to her old postings.

Yeah, she remembered those stories. They were usually headed "Crisis in-" and involved a lot of talking points about oil resources, economics, and religious tensions. Supposedly, the reindeer herders of Frusenhagen were rebelling against centuries of oppression, which somehow involved them smashing up a meat market after decades of no real conflict whatsoever. Annie usually scanned those stories and then went back to work. Born at the tail end of the conflict in Korea, a high-school student during the final years of the Vietnam War, she had never known a world where there wasn't one kind of international crisis of one kind or another. It seemed like the planet was always a mess, and there was nothing that could be done about it: it was just the result of five billion people who all hated each other. Ma Gorshin could really lay into a diner patron who was picking a fight, but you couldn't smack sense into an entire country.

Cobra, on the other hand. 'Cobra.' She worked over the word in her mind, testing its sounds and meanings. A smaller group of people. If General Hawk was right, and this whole thing wasn't actually the result of a bunch of paranoid lunatics reinforcing each others' delusions, then a lot of those wars she had read about and heard about could be chalked up to one very determined group of power-hungry nutjobs.

Murphy had had a point. There was a lot more going on in this unit than she still knew, and General Hawk's speech wasn't making her feel any calmer about the robots and the ninjas. But . . . well . . .

Annie didn't know anything about covert ops, or terrorist groups, or international crises. She was there to cook. But she liked the idea of knowing who to smack.


	12. Thickener

**Author's Note: **Gasp! Plot! Anyone remember that? Yes, in addition to being a transition chapter, this one is gearing us up for more plot-related stuff to come. Hence the title. (Anyone sick of my dumbass cooking puns yet? No?)

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Thickener**

The convoy reached its destination around sunset, and the real work began. Despite being stiff and irritable from sitting in the backs of trucks all day, there would be no rest for the Joes; the new base had the bare bones in place, but that just meant there was a safe place to put all the crates that needed moving. Annie tumbled out of the back of the deuce-and-a-half feeling like the entire stretch of bumpy highway that they had driven over, but rolled her shoulders and resignedly fell in with the rest of the greenshirts. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled, only to be cut off by an all-too-familiar bellowing voice.

Tanks and high-security battle wagons were rolled out of the eighteen-wheelers and hurried down the long ramps hidden in the desert floor. Joes formed chains to help unload the many, many, many boxes and bales that the convoy carried, hurried along as ever by the twin Cerberuses of Beach Head and Sgt. Slaughter.

Annie worked hard, trying to ignore her bone-deep exhaustion and almost convincing herself that she'd managed it. The light faded into the distance, half-hidden behind the rocky foothills that were scattered across the uneven desert, and the work continued. It was almost a relief when Whiskey Down fetched her out of the greenshirt group to distribute the evening's sandwiches.

Forming an orderly line or actually taking time to sit down and eat would disrupt the work; since they only had a limited amount of time to get the contents of the convoy under cover, and national security was more important than sitting and digesting, the quartermasters just passed among the troops with plastic-wrapped food and water bottles.

Not for nothing was the kitchen considered the hub of gossip, and that was in effect even without a kitchen. Moving from group to group with the trays of food, Annie once again found herself taking an informal poll of the Joes' moods. The predominant attitude was sarcasm in a variety of flavors—resigned, irritated, and extra-sarcastic. The one thing everyone could agree on was that a certain terrorist organization, never popular at the best of times, had ensured that not only did the Joes consider them enemies, but were thoroughly annoyed at them too. In fact, there was now not a single person left in the vicinity who didn't have an exquisitely personal grudge against Cobra.

Annie said as much to Chopper while they picked their way down the sandy ramp into the Pit, carrying dinner for the men guarding the prisoners. "What were they planning?" she said, frowning as she stopped and reknotted the sweaty bandanna that kept her hair out of her eyes. "A bunch of robots and half-trained nutjobs, just so they could sneak _one _shapeshifting—I can't believe I just said that word—one shapeshifting guy into the base? Does that make sense?"

Chopper shrugged his massive shoulders. Despite the cooling desert evening, his own short-cropped, pale blond hair (what Annie thought of as a "fuzzcut") was also darkened with sweat. "Been in this job for years, and I still don't get how they think. You oughtta ask Murphy; he's the guy who's been posted here since the beginning."

The woman made a "tch" noise between her teeth. "He told me earlier that I should get used to being on the front line."

"Kind of." Chopper stopped, balancing his parcel with one meaty hand while he unlocked an unpainted steel door. "We do tend to get into scrapes more than the usual burger-flipping fuckwit. Sometimes you'll get tapped for a mission when they need an undercover operative at a restaurant, or in a hotel, or something. And what's your secondary MOS—sniper?"

"Eh," Annie said glumly. "Not really. I had the shots for sniper school, but I get too nervous and give my position away by humming."

"'Old MacDonald,' right?"

"I was hoping people had forgotten that."

That got a snort from Chopper. "If you piss people off, they're going to remember the rumors. You didn't make any friends shoving that Marine under a sink. Hell, only the fact that Storm's a ninja master keeps people from ragging on him about the Cobra thing, and even then you can still hear all kinds of stories."

Annie shifted uncomfortably, trying to balance the stacked pans of sandwiches and cold cuts without losing circulation to her arms. "Cobra thing?"

"Yeah, he used to be a Cobra operative. Put some serious dents in Joe, too, until he switched sides." Chopper was fumbling with another locked door, completely unaware that all the blood had drained from Annie's face. "Nobody's going to forget that he sent a few of our people home in body bags, vow or no vow, but he gets respect for what he's done since then. Still, there's going to be rumors. A greenie ninety-two-golf who copped an attitude with a devil dog? You're not gonna get any slack for a while."

"Wait a minute," Annie said faintly. She wasn't quite sure that the last few seconds had actually happened. "Storm Shadow—a guy who's known for being one of the, if not _the, _deadliest on the planet—used to work for Cobra. The people who attacked our base and nearly got more than a few of us killed. And nobody is . . . I mean . . ."

Chopper shot her a sharp look. "Don't even think about goin' in that direction, 'Stack. Storm's paid his dues." He shouldered open another door, wavering for a moment as he almost lost control of the trays piled up in his arms. "It's never gonna bring back the Joes he dropped, but he's saved a hell of a lot of lives since then. None of us have the right to judge him."

Behind that door was a steep, half-lit staircase, and the effort of negotiating it while loaded down like they were thankfully saved Annie from having to answer. She just bit her lip and concentrated on the steps, one at a time, trying to calm her suddenly-quaking nerves and telling herself that Chopper was right. She hadn't even been here for two weeks; she couldn't possibly know everything about the way things were done. Still, the mere thought of Storm Shadow being on the other side was enough to send chills down her spine.

They had reached the second sublevel. The generators were up and running—Hawk had sent an advance team to make sure that the new Pit was operational before the convoy arrived—but a lot of the mechanisms still hadn't been fired up, and the elevators and special security doors weren't operational yet. In absence of a fancy high-tech cage, the two Cobra prisoners had been locked in a room with only one exit, suitably tiny ventilation ducts, and a large guard surrounding it. It was proving remarkably efficient so far.

Annie and Chopper were vetted three times by different guards before they were allowed access to the temporary cell itself. Most of them she recognized, having encountered them in the mess more than once, but about a third of the group was completely unknown to her. The thought bothered here more than she liked: _I can't be sure who's on our side. _Then, directly followed by: _'our' side. Yeah, you had the briefing . . . you're in with this crew for good now._

Chopper, at least, had no such issues: he chatted amiably with the various Joes and greenshirts while their passes were checked, completely at ease. Slowly, Annie took a breath and tried to calm down. She balanced the trays carefully, trying not to drop any dishes as she set them down. The guards received their plates of—yes, sandwiches—with resigned looks and not too much audible grumbling.

The prisoners, on the other hand, couldn't have looked more out of sorts. Not that Annie blamed them: one was still firmly shackled to a makeshift cot and dosed up on painkillers, while the other appeared to be having trouble sitting and was carefully resting an icepack on what must have been the bruised groin of the century. The quartermaster felt a small stab of guilt at the sight of the drugged-up toxo-viper—especially the heavily-bandaged place where her bullet had been taken out of his shoulder—and quietly set down the rudimentary rations on the folding table next to his cot, trying not to wake him.

Zartan, on the other hand, was getting none of her sympathy. With the guards watching every move like a hawk, Annie briskly checked the level in the water bottles the shapeshifter had been provided with, deposited his sandwiches next to his shackled hands, and did her best to ignore the fact that Zartan would have gladly murdered her, Hall, and every Joe on base. (That briefing had been very instructive. She would never go to sleep without a knife under her pillow, _ever _again.) Then she stepped back while the guards frisked the prisoner, just to make sure Annie hadn't passed him anything she shouldn't, and then submitted to a frisking herself. Throughout it all, Zartan maintained a chilly silence, apparently forcing himself to tolerate the presence of the weak idiots that now surrounded him.

Chopper noticed too. "He's not mainlining coffee any more," he said curiously as the guards locked the cell door again. "Did the transfer shake him up?"

That got a smirk from one of the guards. "He's been in a better mood ever since he found out this part of the new base doesn't have man-sized vent ducts."

"Like that ever stopped Storm or Snake," Chopper pointed out dryly as he and Annie stacked up the empty trays. Annie's grimace went unnoticed by the guards or the other quartermaster. "I swear those guys can walk through walls."

"Maybe, but Hawk stood 'em down. Now the chameleon's sure he's safe, and he's been smugging the place up ever since." The guard, whom Annie vaguely recognized as a newly-minted Joe named Failsafe, grinned and shouldered his rifle. "Nah, I'm waiting for Sgt. Scarlett to come down here on interrogation duty. It's gonna be better than prime-time."

"How'd he take the news about the rupture?"

"Not so well. When Scarlett nuts 'em, she nuts 'em good."

* * *

Instead of taking the empty trays back to the trucks, as Annie had anticipated. Chopper lead her down a different set of corridors and deeper into the new Pit. A set of security doors had been propped open, and the harsh glare of fluorescents flickered ever so slightly as someone wiped a thin layer of dust off the glowing tubes. Here was the new kitchen, very much like the old kitchen—except that the equipment was older, the griddle was much shorter, and Whiskey Down was making a tsking noise as he examined the meat locker.

"I was hoping we wouldn't get transferred here," he said, pushing the door closed. "This kitchen isn't specced to feed the kind of volume we deal with. Still, needs must when the devil drives." Crossing his arms, he eyed the assembled quartermasters (and one desert trooper fiddling with the meat locker's temperature-control gauge), clearly mentally planning out new and more intensive work shifts. Everybody endeavored to look as busy as possible.

Annie dived right into the routine, cleaning and moving things and doing whatever one of the senior quartermasters told her, but inwardly she worried. Just when she thought she had a handle on things, something else happened. The worries about terrorists and robots had been slightly calmed by General Hawk's briefing (it was hard not to be calm when Hawk said you could be), but the sight of the glowering shapeshifter and the mention of . . . well, hell, why hadn't anyone told her that Storm Shadow used to work for Cobra? Did most of them consider that an inconvenient detail? Oh, and so much for Dusty's "good commandos, a little freewheeling." _He _wasn't going to be getting any Miss Nice Quartermaster for a while.

Shifts ended late that night. At 2300 hours, the kitchen finally began to empty out, and Annie was one of the last left on duty. She moved on autopilot, wiping down every flat surface with indeterminable amounts of disinfectant and scrubbing until it shone—the programmed responses from a life of this kind of work. All of it had to be cleaned in one form or another: the counters, the ovens, the refrigerators, the messhall tables and chairs, the steam tables-

Annie was startled out of her reverie by a small, distinct _chink _noise. Surprised, she glanced down. The light caught the warm gleam of a copper jacket.

"Another one?" she muttered, dipping her hand into the otherwise empty steam well. Definitely: a bullet, hollow-point by the shape of it, though the exact type escaped her. It was new, too, with no marks or smudges to show that it had ever been part of a magazine.

Now that was just downright weird. Bullets in the steam trays at the old base she could almost, _almost _understand; people went heavily armed in this kind of unit, and if they didn't accidentally lose some while leaning across to get their food, a particularly dim joker might drop one or two in the trays to see if they would go off. But the troops in the new Pit hadn't even been served a hot meal yet, and nobody would have had the opportunity to lose or plant a bullet in the trays. And the quartermasters, the only people spending their time in this section currently, weren't even going armed while cleaning.

Not to mention that hollow-pointed ammunition wasn't something you shlepped around in your pockets while you were on base . . . or, she conceded, something _most _people wouldn't shlep around. Maybe a third of the Joes probably wouldn't do it.

"Where did you come from?" she murmured, cupping the bullet in her gloved palms.

_Well, my mother was a fifty-cal installment on the U.S.S. _Woodville, _but I'm pretty sure my dad was only a peace-locked Mossberg, _the bullet did not say. Annie shook her head, blinking rapidly and rubbing her eyes with one hand. When the sarcastic voices in her head started sounding more like her hand-to-hand teachers than the PT instructor, she'd been spending too much time worrying.

Maybe it was a superstition? Annie's mother was a rigidly down-to-earth human being, much more so than her rather flighty father, but she would still threaten any employee with public execution if he wore red dishwashing gloves in her kitchen. Put a bullet in the steam trays to . . . christen it, or something? She'd heard stranger things. Shaking her head again, she tucked the bullet into the pocket of her BDUs and got back to work. She could think about it in the morning, when her brain would be working better (or sgt. major would scream at her until it did).

It wasn't until well after midnight when she and the last of the stragglers streamed out of the kitchen. Annie went straight to her newly-assigned bunk, flopped onto it, kicked off her boots, and was asleep before another thought crossed her mind.

When she woke up the next morning, the bullet was gone.


	13. Table Talk

**Author's Note: **And yea, there was more plot, and it was convoluted . . .

Thanks to everyone who's stuck with this story so far. It's gone much, much further than the light humor piece I originally intended, and I hope the shift in tone isn't putting you off. Rest assured that, evidence to the contrary, I _do _know where this is going.

As ever, if Annie begins to show signs of Mary-Suedom or otherwise goes off the rails, I want you to let me know ASAP. She winds up in an odd situation in this chapter, one which may seem a little unlikely for a greenshirt—but everyone picked for Joe has their odd range of skills, some of which may come in handy in the most unlikely of places . . .

This chapter also contains an indirect reference to a fic by the devious CrystalOfEllinon. If you spot it, you'll likely know which 'fic I'm referencing, so let me just say-'twasn't my idea, I merely borrowed it from her.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen: Table Talk**

**

* * *

**

"Sir, someone is fucking with me."

Flint glanced up. "And?"

"And . . . and it's freaking me out, sir." That about summed it up.

In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have sought Flint out at this hour of the morning. When she'd discovered the bullet missing, she had immediately opened her footlocker, looking for the little paper bag that contained the other odds and ends she'd rescued from the steam trays. The bag was in its place, but almost all the bullets had been filched from it; only one, wrapped in an old betting ticket, was left behind. Surprised, irritated, and yes, freaked out, Annie had decided to go straight to the person with the most immediate authority. Duke was too low and General Hawk was too high; Sgt. Major Beach Head handled a lot of the personnel issues (albeit reluctantly), but he had apparently been called out on some special assignment. (Sgt. Slaughter had run PT that morning, to the regret of all.)

That left Flint as the person to report to in a situation of serious regulatory violation. Today, though, he went on duty at 0700, and Annie had shown up at 0703. The coffee apparently hadn't had time to kick in.

"Someone went through my footlocker, sir," she added. That got Flint's attention, and his brow furrowed as he straightened up a little.

"Are you sure about this, greenshirt? That's a serious accusation, especially in this unit."

"Dead serious, sir," Annie said. "And it wasn't an accident, either. Someone specifically picked through my things to remove these items."

"What items?" Flint was already pulling a stack of paper towards him, reaching for a pen with the other hand. The form on top of the stack looked worryingly official.

"Bullets. About seven or eight of them, I think."

The hand on the stack of paper paused. "Bullets?"

"Yes, sir."

"About seven or eight. These were loose bullets?"

"Yes, sir."

"In your footlocker?"

"Yes, sir."

" . . . Short Stack, you are aware that greenshirts aren't supposed to have ordinance among their personal possessions, aren't you?"

Um. Annie shuffled a little. Yes, she _had _been aware of that rule, technically, but . . . "The regulations manual states that the greenshirts aren't supposed to either bring in personal weaponry or _retain _ordinance issued to them here, sir. I didn't bring them in, and they weren't issued to me."

"You actually read the manual?" Flint raised an eyebrow.

"Uh. Yes, sir."

"_Nobody_ reads the manual."

"I'd sort of gathered that, sir."

"Well," Flint said after a moment's consideration, tapping his fingers on the desk, "there's a few ways we can handle this, Short Stack. Violation of a soldier's privacy is not tolerated, period, but you have to understand that it appears nothing of value—sentimental or otherwise—was stolen. You picked these up as, what, curiosities?"

"Sort of, sir. People keep leaving them in the steam trays."

"And then they were stolen."

"Yes, sir."

"Have you considered the possibility that they might have only been borrowed?"

This time, it was Annie who frowned. "Borrowed, sir?"

"Let me put it this way, Short Stack." Flint gestured to his desk. Placed there were an inbox and an outbox, a computer, a few family photographs (all of an extremely well-dressed group, usually standing in front of some historical or cultural landmark), a coffee mug, a jar full of pens, and a few other odds and ends. "At least once every two weeks, usually while stealth training classes are being conducted, something on this desk will change. I once turned my back for five minutes, and looked back to find all of my books carefully re-alphabetized by author rather than title."

"Oh, no." Annie felt her heart sink. "Sir, don't say it was the-"

"All right, I won't say it. But if the bullets return within two days, let me know. I'll keep your report on file in the meantime. And if anything else goes missing, let me know right away. Understood?"

" . . . yes, sir."

* * *

"Bullets?" Chopper said, frowning. "That's not a kitchen superstition I'm familiar with. I know Gung-Ho swears that the only way to christen a stove is to shoot a squirrel off the top of it, but I think I would've noticed he was pulling that crap. Besides, he's banned from the kitchen since the gumbo incident."

"Awful lot of 'incidents' around here," Annie muttered, but carried on mashing the strawberries without pause. "So how would a bullet get into the steam tray, then?"

"Pranksters. Carelessness. You haven't even been here a month, 'Stack, you sure haven't seen the worst of it." Chopper shifted to the side and Annie quickly swept the two pounds of now-pulped strawberries down the long board towards him, where they quickly went into the sauce tureen. "There was a guy named Grunt, back in the early days of the unit. I was only on staff a few weeks before he quit—went civvie, would you believe?-but he sure managed to cram a lot of mayhem into a few days, lemme tell ya." Two cups of sugar went into the tureen, and the sweet aroma of strawberry syrup began to emerge as Chopper whisked the pot onto the nearest warm burner. "None of 'em meant any harm by it, though. Way I hear it, to get headhunted back when the unit was formed, you had to be something seriously special, and that meant there was a lotta camaraderie there."

Annie was willing to accept that. Sort of. "But the bullets?"

"I'm getting to that. Bullets are nothing. Honestly, you learn to live with it." As Annie slid across the next mashed pile of fruit, Chopper gave emptied the tureen into another pot held out by a harassed-looking KP monkey. "Move your ass," he informed the soldier calmly before turning back to his work.

"You haven't met Deep-Six, have you?" he continued. Annie winced and made the sign of the cross. "Oh, you have. Well, imagine coming into the kitchen at 0500, ready to get to work, and finding that guy skinning a six-foot bull shark on your nice clean counter. Bullets in the steam trays are nothing compared to cleaning up shark guts while Deep-Six just . . . _watches _you."

Okay, Annie had to admit that that idea was pretty hair-raising. At least the ninjas did you the courtesy of not being visible most of the time. Still . . . "But why would someone steal bullets?" she persisted. The last lot of strawberries went into the pot, and she ran her gloved hands under the sink quickly before turning her attention to the next task—slicing slabs off a chunk of spam the size of an industrial air conditioner.

"You probably had it right the first time," Chopper suggested. "Someone's fucking with you. You did piss off the n-"

"Not. A. Word."

That got a snort from Chopper. "Look, it's not as bad as it seems. Things have just been a little crazier than normal these past couple of weeks."

"Yeah . . . so I gathered."

"Seriously, 'Stack, you should just drop it. I know everything seems nuts right now." To her surprise, Chopper slowed in his work long enough to put a hand on her shoulder. His eyes were a warm brown, his expression a cross between amusement and concern—an odd thing to see on a man with shoulders like a linebacker and a fading series of Hell's Angels tattoos visible on his biceps. For a moment, looking at the open friendliness of his face and the worry now evident there, Annie felt small.

Well, smaller than usual.

"Seriously," he repeated, giving her shoulder a little shake. "It seems crazy. But these are good people. It's like this because they deal with crap none of us ever had to, not even in the worst overseas postings. You have to let them blow off steam 'cause they deserve to."

Annie took a deep breath. "Couldn't someone have told me that earlier?" she said.

"Dusty says he did." Chopper released her and went back to his sauce, a grin on his face. "He also says you looked like it would take a while for you to get it through your head."

The brief good feeling vanished, and Annie pulled a face as she cut another half-inch-thick slice off the block of spam. "Nice of him to render judgment," she commented a touch icily.

"Relax. Everyone gets talked about, and to be fair, your Rulebook Up My Ass attitude has been raising some eyebrows. There are worse things to be known for, especially with this group."

"Yeah? Like what?"

Murphy stuck his head around the corner, not even pretending he hadn't been eavesdropping. He was carrying a bottle of Kahlúa in one hand and balancing a tray of blintzes with the other. "Once upon a time," he began, "when the unit was young and we were all fresh-faced and idealistic, there was a greenshirt who earned himself the name 'Hands-On' . . ."

"Y'know what? Never mind."

* * *

Annie let the issue go, at least as far as the rest of the unit was concerned. They never reappeared, but she began checking her possessions regularly, and nothing else ever seemed to go missing. She was irritated—to say the least—but the whole issue seemed to be a dead-end, and chewing over it just made her more and more pointlessly frustrated.

She still took some precautions. The final bullet, the one that had escaped notice, she wrapped in paper and stuck in the bottom of a box of feminine hygiene products. If that one went missing too, she could narrow down the list of possible suspects to 1) women and 2) certified creepers.

But, as she once overheard Zap telling Footloose, "There's this thing called 'real life,' and some people argue that it's more important than karma crystals and paranoia." She got the impression that there was a story there and didn't ask, but Zap had been correct in the essence of the argument: worrying about phantom thieves and missing ordinance was only adding stress to an already-stressful job. Annie couldn't wish away her fears, but G.I. Joe was doing a good job distracting her from them.

Besides, she had a target now.

Carter Hall, the toxo-viper, was in medical isolation while he recovered from the surgery on his shoulder and collarbone. He would live, but he definitely wasn't grateful for the fact that he'd been treated much better than prisoners of Cobra ever were, and even when conscious he kept up a stony silence that pretty much defied any attempts at questioning. Doc had quickly declared that, as a patient still recovering from invasive surgery, Hall could _not _be given over to the tender, scary mercies of any of the more notorious Joes. That made him pretty much a wash on the intel-gathering front, and Hall was temporarily ignored in favor of questioning Zartan.

For Annie, though, he was a golden opportunity. She was irritated, still paranoid, and frankly resented him more than a little for causing her to question her job and her ability to do it. Which made Hall the best kind of person to be feeding: a captive audience that she disliked.

Heavily sedated for the first few days of their acquaintance, and afterwards still kept partially immobilized while his shattered collarbone and shoulder began the long, arduous healing process, he had no way of escaping from her. He couldn't even demand that a different person bring his food; Annie was the person legitimately assigned to the duty, she wasn't exactly torturing him, and there was that whole "terrorist who invaded a secret government installation with intent to kill" thing. And it made no nevermind if he maintained his silence, because anybody who's spent enough time in the soul-crushing hell of customer service knows how to pour out their grievances at length.

"I think you would benefit from reexamining your life choices," she told him briskly on day three as she peeled back the foil covering on his bowl of lovely, nourishing, bland-as-hell broth. "At least, that's what I keep hearing on the talk shows. Sally Jessy Raphael and stuff like that. Of course," she added, "I wouldn't trust Sally Jessy as far as I could throw her. I've been reading the Cobra files, you know, and they're all over the place about mind control, but I bet you guys have _nothing _on Sally. Between her and Springer, I'm not surprised you haven't taken over America yet. The airwaves have already been conquered. You guys haven't got a chance."

Or, later the same day: "It all comes down to civility, I think. Oh, you and your terrorist buddies probably would've said it was because of money or greed or the capitalist imperialist running dogs—y'know, I _still _don't know what that phrase means? It always reminds me of my Uncle Joey's friend Todd, who never managed to get a girlfriend but was _very _into greyhounds, if you know what I mean—anyway, there's lots of reasons, but I personally think it's civility. Interesting, isn't it? The stuff your kindergarten teacher tells you still applies. 'Don't take other people's stuff.' 'Stop pushing and wait your turn.' 'Don't invade a government installation in a purple jumpsuit.' If more people obeyed the basic rules of civility, we wouldn't have to do this. So it's really all your own fault. Should've listened back in kindergarten, buddy."

For the first four days after he regained full consciousness, Hall kept stubbornly quiet. Annie would bring him three squares a day, usually with a fresh topic of conversation ready to go, but he was about as talkative as Sgt. Snake-Eyes and even less personally engaging-a record in Annie's book. But as a captive audience he couldn't be beat, and if that bothered him, it was no skin off her nose.

On day five, as Annie was setting down a bowl of mixed salad and informing him of all the various unsavory connotations of the color purple, the toxo-viper let out a low groan. She jumped a little, surprised at that, and almost spilled the bowl of salad across his lap. For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

"Fuck," he said at last. "You _really _never shut up, do you?"

"Well, you weren't doing any talking," Annie pointed out, putting the bowl back down, "and nature abhors a vacuum, I always heard. Welcome back to Earth."

Hall gave the bowl of salad the kind of look usually reserved for a small, giggling clown doll that follows you everywhere. "You know, when I said I wasn't afraid to die, I meant it. It'd be quicker than this shit."

"Yeah, but that would be merciful. And from all the Cobra literature I've had to read since you people decided to attack, we here at G.I. Joe are ruthless, tyrannical capitalist scum who 'use the facade of justice as an excuse to push their own power-hungry agenda.'" Annie poured a glassful of orange juice from the Thermos she had brought and set it down on the table next to his bed. "If I'm annoying you, you brought it on yourself, going up against clearly psychopathic evil types like us."

The toxo-viper shifted a little on his bed, trying to get comfortable. One side was heavily taped up, the arm strapped to his chest and a figure-eight splint keeping both his shoulders held back and immobilized, so this wasn't a very successful endeavor. "Shut up. Please. I'm not a TB, okay? Just shut the fuck up about it."

Annie raised an eyebrow. "TB? Doc did a tuberculosis test, didn't he?"

"_A . . . _T . . . B, dumbass," the toxo-viper said, as if he was spelling it out for an especially slow child. "TB. True Believer."

"Nice." Annie planted her hands on her hips, her expression unbelieving. "So you're captured as part of a group breaking into the Pit, and suddenly you don't believe in any of the Cobra dogma, right? Just a regular guy trying to make ends meet?"

"That so hard to believe, huh? You really think everyone working for Cobra is that stupid?"

"Ah, because there's so very much evidence to the contrary." Yeah, it was juvenile as hell, but just sniping at someone felt so damn _good_. Annie almost grinned before she caught herself and assumed a suitably impassive facade.

"You sound like a fucking five-year-old."

"You have a problem with that, I take it?"

Hall groaned. "I was shot by a crazy fucking cook. All the ways the mission had to go wrong, and I got shot by Julia Child's retarded niece. Just _shut up, _would you?"

"You invaded our base. Technically, this whole thing is your fault."

"I was _ordered _to. Take it up with the goddamn Baroness!"

Annie was about to reply when a sharp rap on the door drew her attention. Steeler and Torpedo, the two unfortunates currently on guard duty outside, were looking in through the small plexiglass window. Steeler was knocking on the window with a closed fist, a communicator held in the other.

"Drink your OJ, kid. It's good for you." Annie picked up her now-empty tray and headed back to the door, ignoring the rather offensive gesture that Hall made with his one free hand. Torpedo opened the door and Annie slipped out into the corridor, tucking the tray under her arm.

"Flint wants to see you," Steeler said briefly. Annie reflexively clutched the tray, the adrenaline high from the argument slipping away to be replaced by good old-fashioned dread. She reviewed the rulebook in her head. Was talking to the prisoner like that against any regulations? There was a coda to section #31 (Treatment of EPWs in High-Risk Conditions) which stated that "proper decorum is to be observed when seeing to the needs of the EPW," but she didn't think she'd violated that. She certainly hadn't given away anything about G.I. Joe . . . unless Uncle Joey's friend Todd was somehow connected to all this? Unlikely.

"What for?" she said automatically. Reporting a regulatory violation to Flint? That was one thing. Specifically being summoned _by _Flint, presumably for a very specific reason? That was another thing entirely.

"No idea." Steeler hooked the communicator back onto his belt. "But Flint wants to see you."

Still clutching the tray, Annie went. The administrative offices were several floors up from the prison level, and in her experience people who rightly answered to "sir" didn't like to be kept waiting, so she scrambled as best she could. The elevator was packed, mainly with motor pool jockeys who were talking about some kind of new filter that could cut heat emissions for silent running, and it seemed to rise agonizingly slowly. Annie stared at the closed doors, wondering just what the hell was going on. Maybe it was about the bullets? Had they turned up something on . . . okay, that was too ridiculous to imagine. She had to stop thinking about that conspiracy-theory crap.

Finally, out of breath from sheer nervousness, Annie skidded into Flint's office and came to a halt in front of his desk, almost dropping the tray as she saluted. Flint looked up from his computer, but didn't say anything. Lady Jaye, who was seated in front of his desk, rose instead.

"Short Stack," she said. Her expression wasn't unfriendly, but Annie couldn't read it, and that almost made her more nervous than the summons itself. "At ease."

Fat chance of that, but Annie managed to relax a couple of millimeters. "Ma'am."

"I'm not a ma'am, Short Stack. I thought Beach Head had yelled that into all our new recruits." Jaye studied Annie, apparently taking a measure of pity on the flustered quartermaster. "Do you know what this is about?"

"No, sergeant," Annie said truthfully.

Flint put a hand on the computer monitor and rotated it until it faced Annie and Jaye. A video feed was running on the screen—black-and-white shots from several angles at once, showing a very familiar prison cell. One was evidently live, since it showed Hall reluctantly drinking the orange juice; the other was a recording, showing Annie in the act of almost spilling salad all over a prisoner of the United States government.

"You got him to talk." It wasn't a question, and Annie wasn't sure if it was a good thing, either. She was a quartermaster; lodging an administrative complaint with an officer was one thing, but being called on the carpet regarding a high-stakes prisoner wasn't normally in the job description. She nodded, not quite trusting herself to say anything.

"How?" Jaye said. It was pretty obvious to all present that she already knew, but she was going to make Annie repeat it for some reason. The quartermaster took a breath and tried to relax.

"I talk a lot, sergeant. And I was the one who shot him, so I felt responsible. I thought I was helping by . . . uh, telling him where he'd gone wrong."

"You harangued him. A lot." There was definitely amusement creeping into Flint's voice, and that was _never _good where a warrant officer was concerned.

"Did I do something wrong, sir?"

"You didn't actually reveal any classified information . . . though probably only because you don't have access to any." Flint rotated the monitor again, putting it back in place. "But you did manage to get some from him. Zartan's tough to make sing at the best of times, and since we don't condone torture, we haven't found out who specifically ordered the attack. While you were squabbling with the prisoner, though, he mentioned the Baroness giving the order."

Annie glanced back and forth between Flint and Jaye. Okay, so she _wasn't _going to be on punishment duty until the end of time? She could live with this.

"Talk to him some more," Jaye said simply. "We're going to give you a list of topics to pursue. Introduce these into conversation by any means possible—but don't be obvious about it, or he'll clam up again. Your strength seems to be a mildly harassing monologue, so stick to that whenever possible." She held out her hand, and Flint passed her a folded piece of paper. "Destroy this as soon as you've memorized it."

As Annie reached for the paper, Jaye withdrew it for a moment. "Nobody else is to know about this," she said. "Is that understood?"

Annie nodded slowly, and Jaye let her take the paper.

Flint turned away in his chair, already reaching for another set of files. "Good. Dismissed, Short Stack."

"Yes, sir!" He didn't have to tell her twice. Tray and paper in hand, Annie scurried out.

* * *

She was supposed to have been back in the kitchens ten minutes ago, but she was pretty sure this was more important. Thankfully, the bunkroom for female greenies was empty at this time of day, and Annie sat down heavily on her assigned rack. Various things were running through her head, most of them nervous obscenities, as she unfolded the paper with shaking fingers.

There were six lines, neatly typed:

_Introduce following topics of conversation. Further instructions will follow when data has been obtained._

_-Faction dissonance within Cobra_

_-Faction dissonance between different Vipers. Star-Vipers of primary concern._

_-Motivation behind attack. Subtlety encouraged._

_-Motivation behind insertion of shapeshifter into Pit. Subtlety encouraged._

_-Possibility of informer within G.I. Joe._

" . . . Jesus," Annie breathed. The word _informer _stayed there, almost hovering in front of her eyes, even as she tore the paper into tiny pieces and began to swallow them. "I did _not _sign up for this."


	14. Tips

**Author's****Note:**In which Annie discusses things, an inept covert operation is launched, and condiments come in handy.

As ever, thanks to everyone who reads this, and much love to my awesome reviewers. :) I'd like to give a special shout-out to the anon reviewers, though! You guys leave great feedback, and I'd love to be able to respond, but I can't PM anyone who's anonymous and responding to reviews in-story is technically a no-no. If you'd like to get responses to the lovely reviews you've been leaving, consider getting an account, huh? I promise we don't bite!

But because it makes me twitch if I can't answer a question about a favored character, especially a character with recurring prominence in this story, I will say that someone (excuse me while I glance meaningfully at the anon reviews for another story) once asked me if I made up the bit about Dusty being a refrigerator repairman. Nope! According to his official bio, he worked fixing refrigerators and A/Cs while studying desert ecology, and that was before he even went into the Army. He's also been known to eat lizards, but that's strictly a survival thing. Hopefully.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen: Tips**

* * *

Flint and Lady Jaye had been clear. This was serious stuff, now; espionage, covert interrogation, attempting to divine highly valuable information from a recalcitrant prisoner regarding a possible security breach within a high-end government facility. It sounded like the plot to a movie starring Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal, possibly with that _American __Ninja _guy thrown in for flavor. Time to pull herself up by her bootstraps, get down to brass tacks, and possibly even stiffen her upper lip.

Annie went back to the rulebook.

The standards for interrogating prisoners were clear but, heart in her throat, Annie managed to convince herself that she wasn't actually _interrogating _anybody: if she said something and he happened to respond, well, that wasn't a big deal, right? That was her excuse, and she would hang onto it for dear life (or career). The truth was, deep down, Annie knew that she hadn't been ordered to do this because she was a professional in the proper sense. She was good at harassing people until they talked back just to shut her up. If she tried to be professional, she'd likely flop faster than Dad's attempt to institute a three-serving limit at the Friday Nite Fish Fry. So she had to stick with what she knew . . . And what she knew was lying to people's faces while handing them food. That would be a start.

The next morning, she went straight from PT to making a start on the rations for the prisoners. Somebody had apparently been talking to Whiskey Down; he shot Annie a searching gaze when she walked past, and quickly ordered Eighty-Six to pick up her slack. Annie felt a small twitch of guilt and apprehension at that (nobody was less popular than a grunt who didn't pull their weight), but the hard truth was that she really didn't see another option. Better to be unpopular with your fellow grunts than get the fish-eye and the old dereliction-of-duty from the people who held the power of life and career over you.

The prisoners' breakfasts were easy to prepare. Both of them were getting Corn Flakes, sliced fruit, and a cup of cottage cheese; Annie made sure to include a few packets of sugar on Hall's tray, because honestly, only an insane shapeshifter would eat Corn Flakes unsweetened. (Yurgh.) Then, covered trays carefully balanced, she made her way down to the cellblock. Barbecue and Airtight had pulled guard duty that morning, and both nodded amiably as she made her way past.

Zartan was . . . Zartan. He still couldn't stand up, but he continued ignoring Annie with his usual glower. Some worrisome part of Annie's brain noted that he was actually not half-bad looking, if one discounted the bizarre cowl and makeup, but the other nine-tenths of her brain beat that portion into submission. Being in this unit was _definitely _affecting her judgment.

As soon as she'd gone through the usual post-Zartan frisking, Annie picked up the other tray and headed for Hall's cell. The two men had originally been in the same room, but Hall had been moved to his own around the time Annie had started monologuing at him, and thank goodness for small favors: while her previous rants had been motivated by genuine feeling, Annie suspected that trying to pull this kind of thing off with an ulterior motive would be instantly caught out by Zartan. Taking a deep breath, she carefully arranged her face into a sulky scowl as the guards opened the door to Hall's cell.

Nothing would make someone who hated you more curious than a bad mood. Annie practically stomped into the cell, almost making the dishes rattle on the tray, and slammed down the whole lot on the table so hard that Hall actually flinched. He didn't look much happier than she did, either.

"Bitch," the toxo-viper said briefly.

"Fucker," Annie snapped as she yanked the cover off the tray.

Hall sniffed the food. "No wonder you joined the Army; you're a lousy-ass cook." Annie gave him a withering look, which didn't faze him in the slightest. Unfortunately, he didn't seem ready to say anything more, which meant that he wasn't going to be giving up any useful information. The quartermaster mentally assembled her conversational ammunition and redoubled her glare.

"I hate you," she informed him bitterly, ignoring the curious looks from the guards peering through the soundproof glass door. "I never would've had to deal with that asshole Flint if it wasn't for you." She mentally sent a prayer for understanding to the gods of the warrant officers. "So why don't you keep your mouth shut and let me do my job, okay?"

That got an actual smirk from Hall, the most alive expression she'd seen from him since her bullet busted his collarbone. "Got called on the carpet, huh? Poor, poor you. What for?"

"None of your business."

"What, are you scared?"

Annie scowled and glared at the floor. "He wanted to talk to me about the way I was treating you," she muttered as reluctantly as she could manage. Hall smirked again, and Annie found herself glad that she didn't actually have to pretend to get along with him. Now that he was talking again, Carter Hall was shaping up to be . . . well . . . kind of a dick, honestly. And not the kind of dick that Clutch could be occasionally—a genuine asshole.

"My heart bleeds," he said. The word 'sneer' could be applied to his tone.

"Yeah, imagine serving in a unit where they give a damn about the prisoners," Annie shot back. Hall rolled his eyes, and Annie planted her hands on her hips. "And I didn't get taken off duty, so wipe that expression off your face or I'll put Ex-Lax in your pudding tonight."

"'I weep for you, the walrus said, I deeply sympathize,'" Hall said, raising an eyebrow. There was an odd cadence to his speech, and it took Annie a moment to realize that he was quoting—quoting _poetry, _of all things, something she'd only ever heard from Flint, Lady Jaye, or an especially liquored-up Grandpa Hoffman. "'And with tears and sobs he sorted out those of the largest size/ Holding his pocket-handkerchief before his streaming eyes.'"

"So you're a walrus?" Annie said, frowning a little. "Where's the boo boo bee doo part?"

Hall rolled his eyes and picked up his glass of juice. "It's from _Alice __in __Wonderland, _fuckhead. The Walrus and the Carpenter. I was expressing, via a poetic medium, how few shits I actually give about your current predicament."

"God, you're a jerk. I liked you better when you didn't say anything." Annie surveyed the smarmy toxo-viper. Phase one was complete: they were now conversing smoothly with no pauses, and while the conversation consisted mostly of insults, she'd still managed to get Hall to reveal a few things about himself . . . albeit accidentally. (She didn't remember any walruses—walri?—in _Alice __in __Wonderland, _but then, it had been years since she'd seen that movie.)

"Somewhere, the world's tiniest Care Bear is caring its little goddamn heart out. You wanted me to talk, you've got me talking."

"And now I want you to stop talking," Annie said sharply. Any good waitress develops a gift for sensing moods, especially if she wants that tip, and though he was finally running his mouth she guessed that it wouldn't be productive to goad him too much right away. Pushing the issue wouldn't look realistic, not with the surly role she was playing: Short Stack, the cook who'd been chewed out over her treatment of a prisoner, wouldn't want to risk getting in trouble again so soon. She'd leave it 'til lunch. "Enjoy your Corn Flakes, dickweed."

"I won't." He sniffed the tray. "They smell odd. Like . . . sour grapes?"

Annie scowled and slammed out of the room. Both of the guards were looking at her surprisedly, and she notched the scowl up a couple of notches.

"Didn't want Corn Flakes," she said. One of the guards raised an eyebrow but didn't comment, which was good for Annie. She didn't think she could keep up the imposture under questioning. She slammed out of the detention area, looking as pissed-off as possible.

As she proceeded along the corridors, she let the mask gradually slip. The place still looked more like an abandoned warehouse than a secret base, but it was coming to life gradually: the lights were being cleaned, groups of greenshirts jogged past in formation, the smell of musty corners was beginning to fade. There were faces in the passersby that she recognized now—people Annie had gotten used to seeing every day at PT.

She realized with a start, and a halfhearted stab of regret, that she knew all of them only by their code names. Since she had come there, the only person who'd introduced himself by his real name was the toxo-viper. She was an Annie adrift in a sea of Storm Shadows, Whiskey Downs, and Sergeant Slaughters.

At the same time, though, Annie had a stake in it now. She knew those greenshirts by their code names better than she knew Carter Hall by his real name. That was a nasty thought. And nastier still was the memory of the words on that paper: _p__ossibility __of __informer __within __G.I. __Joe. _Sure, Annie had no particular love for some of the people in the unit, but that was purely personal. She knew she was a prickly bitch sometimes, and that was that. Not their fault. The idea of someone on the inside, selling secrets and sending people in to attack the Pit in the middle of the night . . . it made her a little sick.

The kitchen was smaller than the old one, but it was bustling, and Annie was glad to get back to it. She threw herself into the work, taking her place at her station as if nothing had happened and sending two of the kitchen helpers running for ingredients. Waffles today, a recipe she and a couple of other cooks had worked up in Germany when they were all desperately bored. It was a modified recipe with red velvet batter folded into the mix, a combination that had proved surprisingly popular with troops looking for a sugar boost in the morning.

"You look like you wanna bite someone," Murphy commented as he stowed a bottle in one of the cupboards and tried to be nonchalant about it. "Bad time with the prisoners?"

She had to keep up the act. "Hate those guys," she muttered as she whipped the batter almost into a froth. "Are all Cobras dicks?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Murphy scurried down his side of the long griddle, flipping hash browns. "The reason Cobra Commander shouts so good is that he has resonance where his brains oughtta be." That got a snort from Whiskey Down, and made Annie laugh—a convenient excuse to drop the bad temper act. "Does this mean you want off prisoner duty?" he added. "I can take over. I've got years of built-up dickhead resistance."

Whiskey Down raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't say anything, and Annie jumped into the gap. "Nah," she said. "I pissed some people off with that damn sink thing, and if they catch me ducking, I'll get busted to . . . I don't know. They'll invent a new rank to bust me to." She laughed again. "Besides, this guy's like the ultimate cranky customer. If I can handle him, I'm golden when I go back to waitressing in a few years."

"Oh, yeeeah," Eighty-Six drawled. "If Ai'da knew masochism was where y'were at, Ai'da been ruder t'ya."

"Come on, we're all masochists. We joined Joe, didn't we?" S.O.S. pointed out. Somebody threw a used rubber glove at him, making him yelp and slap it away.

"Don't y'let sergeant major hear y'say that," Eighty-Six sang out mockingly. Chopper made the sign of protection against the Evil Eye, making the woman giggle a little and getting a wink from him. Annie, the perpetual people-watcher, wondered how the former biker and gang-banger (yeah—she recognized some of those tattoos) picked up a gesture like that. Eighty-Six on the other hand, the Orleanais who kept a picture of Sainte Marie de la Croix over her bunk . . .? She took note of the glances between the two of them and mentally chalked up another strike against frat regs.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of waffle batter and conversation and work, work, work. The warm atmosphere of the kitchen enveloped her, including her despite relatively short acquaintance. In here they were all cooks, all plying their particular trade. They had a shared language, shared expertise, and a love of good food . . . granted, the last wasn't usually an issue in a military kitchen, but G.I. Joe had been a pleasant change in that regard. The camaraderie of the whole place gave Annie a quick boost, putting some of her doubts and nervous feelings to rest.

Self-defense next, God help her; some part of her had the feeling of being back in high school, complete with breaking out in nervous sweats at the thought of stepping into a class. At least today was a Sergeant Scarlett day. She hit pretty much as hard as the ninjas, but it was easier to deal with someone whose face you could see.

Also, sometimes people pissed Scarlett off enough to really go to town. To Annie, who had spent her formative years taking peoples' shit with a smile, it was a glorious sight to behold.

Lunchtime came around. For the Joes, seafood stir-fry; for the prisoners, frozen fish sticks and hot dog casserole. Not quite a violation of the Geneva Convention, but definitely a pointed statement. A statement that said "if you cooperate fully, you may get ketchup."

Zartan was not cooperating. Zartan didn't get ketchup.

Carter Hall wasn't cooperating either, but he got ketchup. Mainly because it was a good conversation starter.

"Hope you're not allergic to tomatoes," she said, plopping down the tray on the injured man's lap. "Not that there's a lot of tomatoes in there. It's shelf-stable."

Hall grimaced, and for a moment, Annie shared his pain. The words 'shelf-stable' invoked a similar reaction in anyone with a military background. Meaning as it did a product guaranteed not to spoil no matter how long it sat our unrefrigerated, it also meant that flavor was strictly optional. Shelf-stable bread was questionable, shelf-stable milk disturbing, shelf-stable ketchup an experience not to be forgotten—no matter how much model glue you sniffed.

(On the other hand, the Gorshins came from a long and experienced line of backyard moonshiners, and Annie recognized prime Pruno bait when she saw it.)

"The only thing I'm allergic to is your lousy cooking," Hall said, examining the tray with a look of distaste. "Why don't you just drop the pretense and bring out the guys with the cigar cutters and electrodes already?"

"We talked about that this morning. Unlike your side, we don't torture." Annie leaned over, sniffed the ketchup, and pretended to suppress a gag. "Not much, anyway. If you're good, I might get you some Heinz."

"Oh joy. For all your chatting about how superior Joes are, I got better chow at Cobra." He pushed the tray away.

Annie stepped back and leaned against the doorframe. "But joining Cobra was still _bad, _Carter. Good chow doesn't even enter into it." Good, he'd brought up the topic of Cobra himself this time; at least she didn't have to force the issue, which would've put him on his guard. "That's the thing you don't seem to get. I can't bring a bad guy good ketchup just because."

The toxo-viper snorted. "You keep saying that, and I keep not caring. Cobra paid my bills, and that's way fucking better than anything you guys ever did for me. Why should I listen to you? Ketchup ain't the way to go."

Aha, a hard-boiled criminal. He was arrogant, even more arrogant than Annie knew she herself could be, and that spoke to a certain sense of superiority that would be tough to crack. He honestly believed that he was in the right, or at least not as in the wrong as she was. Annie frowned a little.

All right, nasty hadn't worked and nice wasn't likely to work either. Annie had to break out the big guns. The human trait of bile fascination was one of a professional gossip's most powerful weapons, and Annie has been raised by professional gossips.

"You know what?" she said, crossing her arms."You remind me of Naked Ted."

Hall frowned. "Tell me that's not a Joe."

"No, no, no. Ted was a guy I knew back home, years ago. Nice guy, decent-looking, about thirty-eight or so back then. Worked as an electrical engineer and all-around maintenance man; they said nobody could fix a short like Ted. But for some reason, he liked to walk around naked."

"You're gonna get to the fuckin' point, right?"

"So impatient!" Annie shook her head. "The point is, Naked Ted had a blind spot. He was smart, he was good at his job, but he just couldn't get it through his head that people didn't want to see his ding-a-ling. The result was an awful lot of arrests for indecent exposure—not to mention that this was all happening in the Midwest, and do you know how cold it gets there in winter? Kinda awkward all 'round."

The toxo-viper's expression was odd; he seemed weirdly interested despite his own best judgment. "So what happened to Naked Ted?"

"Frostbite."

On his _ear, _that is, but Annie didn't mention that part. The blood drained from Hall's face, and he crossed his legs instinctively, wincing at the mere thought of it. "You're kidding."

"Nope. The tip of it fell right off." It had given the ear an odd folded appearance, too. Hall looked like he was about to gag, and Annie took pity on him. "Your blind spot is Cobra, Mister Toxo-Viper. You might think it's just like robbing a bank or some other crime . . . and believe me, I know about crime, my family's been moonshining since the Civil War . . . but it gets you in way further over your head than you'd ever guess. And eventually, bits of you are going to start coming off. That's why you remind me of Naked Ted." She stepped forward again and lifted the plastic cover off the casserole dish. "Hot dog?"

The story itself was enough to weird Hall out slightly, but the sight of the hot dog casserole really sealed the deal. "Jesus," he said finally, gulping down a bit of nausea and glancing away from the greasy mess of meat and noodles. "You've got problems."

"Let's put it this way." She gave him her best customer-satisfaction-is-my-job smile. "I'm just the cook. You really, _really _want me to send down the actual fighters? Snake-Eyes is a lot less chatty than I am."

The color of his face said that he knew that name. Annie kept the smile on her face, flicking back one slightly overgrown lock of hair for maximum cheeriness and folksy down-home good will. Aha, she thought to herself. He didn't like having his bluff called.

"Okay, it's not _that _bad," he muttered, sniffing the plate again. Annie took pity on him and pulled a couple of Burger King ketchup packets out of the pockets of her BDUs.

"Bon appetit." Still smiling, she trotted on out of the room with a bit of a spring in her step. Hall had jumped on the packets like a starving dog.

Ketchup was a lousy foundation for a professional relationship—or a covert interrogation—but it was a start.


	15. Unblocking the Sink

**Author's Note: **Insert usual excuses and whining re work, real life, etcetera here. You've heard it all before. Alas and alack for the fate that forces me to (gasp!) earn a living!

Here is further plot thickening. I'm sure you're even sicker of that than of my excuses, but . . . trust me? I'm a professional. Sort of.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: Unblocking the Sink**

When Anne Geraldine Gorshin decided to go into the United States Army, there was a predictable amount of family disagreement. Her father had served in Korea, but Vietnam was much fresher in everyone's minds, and her parents were having visions of her dying of trench foot in a ditch somewhere. Annie, though, was determined: she wanted to go to college. Granted, she wasn't sure what the hell she was going to do with college once she got to it, but that was something she could worry about in the future. Her plan was college, and college required money they didn't have or scholarships she couldn't qualify for, which left the US Army and the GI Bill.

It took her approximately thirty-two minutes—the length of time the intake drill instructor took to make the first recruit freak out—to realize that maybe she hadn't thought her plan through.

Nevertheless, she stuck with it. College, college, college, she chanted in her brain while doing the billionth pushup drill: it was a word that meant a good job, a degree, a life in the big city away from her no-horse home town and the grill at the Golden Egg. Generation after generation of Gorshins had been stubborn bastards, after all, and she was determined to use that stubbornness to make some kind of mark on the world. Or a pile of money. Money would be pretty good too.

She was always better at theory than at execution, busily imagining herself as a successful professional in some capacity. Army cook was a . . . a step in the plan. It wasn't a job she would be doing forever. She told herself that while she washed dishes and turned out the ten millionth pancake. Not always a cook, not always a cook.

That day, after her first successful interview with Carter Hall, captive Toxo-Viper, Annie found herself in a bizarrely good mood. There was no real reason for it: she'd accomplished nothing aside from issuing a subtle castration thread to a prisoner, and possibly putting him off hot dog casserole for life to boot. Nevertheless, she was whistling as she trotted back to the kitchen, getting odd looks from several passing Joes. She didn't even make a detour to avoid Sgt. Major Beach Head, who gave her a suspicious glance as she saluted with a smile.

It wasn't until she was elbow-deep in the lunch dishes that she realized what was going on. She _wasn't _just a cook any more: she was an undercover agent, a deep-cover spy using subtle threats and womanly wiles (Sort of. She'd never known a man to make hot dog casserole) to ferret out information from a captured enemy who had no idea of her true identity. On the surface, she was a grunt, a greenshirt—but she was actually on a secret mission from high command! She had a deep, dark secret. She was making the mark she dreamed of. She was _special._

"Jesus Christ," she said aloud, frowning at her reflection in the dirty dishpan water and ignoring the curious expression Chopper shot her way. She knew that reading her mother's Harlequin Presents had had a bad effect on her, but she hadn't known just how bad until now. Special, Annie? Really? She had _shot _the man she was currently annoying, and some part of her was just enjoying the novelty of it all. Fantasies of power and escape were all very well, but now it was taking on a frightening tinge.

In a few days, Warrant Officer Flint would call her to his office for a report on her super-secret no-take-backs investigation and interrogation, and she would get to be special some more. Then maybe she could romanticize some _other_ aspect of national security that might get someone killed—like that mission to Bosnia that half the martial artists were shipping out for tomorrow. Boy, wasn't that exciting and novel! It wasn't like people came back from those almost dead or anything.

"Hey, 'Stack," SOS said, prodding her shoulder. "You okay?"

She shook her head. "Yeah. Why?"

"You've been staring at that plate for like three minutes."

"There was a stain on it."

SOS raised an eyebrow.

"That was shaped like Jesus. Look, are we going to get this done, or are you going to play twenty questions about how I wash dishes?"

Young Annie Gorshin had dreamed of being special.

Young Annie Gorshin, who had never shot anybody or lived through the invasion of a top-secret military base, had been an idiot.

* * *

Quartermasters occupied an odd position in G.I. Joe. Technically they were specialists, but overall they were Support, and troops like that were liable to be reallocated to any part of Support that needed help no matter what their specialty allegedly was. Annie was quickly becoming resigned to the confusion of it all, but that afternoon she was grateful for it: an afternoon spent in the laundry or the motor pool would keep her mind off her increasingly black thoughts.

Six of the cooks were paired off into twosomes and assigned to different support crews for the afternoon. Annie breathed a small sigh of relief when she narrowly avoided being assigned to mortuary services. That kind of job was never a friendly prospect at the best of times, and working as unskilled labor for any 92Mike in a high-security situation was a post only for people with strong stomachs and no sentimentality. For a woman who'd only recently wounded her first man (unless you counted the effects of her cooking), it wasn't something she could happily deal with. No, lucky Annie Gorshin got flight deck duty, where she and a few others would be packing equipment and parachutes under the watchful eye of High Time, the jumpmaster.

While High Time hovered and double-checked their work, Annie, Murphy, two junior 92Romeos, and a half a dozen other greenshirts all gathered around packing chutes and cargo. A conversation was soon struck up: chute-packing was as good as a quilting bee for the Army set. The kitchen might have been the center of the gossip, but any time two or three people put their heads together, they were apt to discuss the foibles of their fellow man in one way or another. Flint could probably trace it back to the need of primitive humanity to detect weaknesses in others, but honestly, Annie figured people just thought it was funny.

Today's blue-plate special seemed to be none other than Sgt. Duke. One of the greenies, a coarse-faced guy known as Dead Meat, had the skinny: Duke had accidentally left an opened letter in the mailroom, a letter which happened to be from his old high school girlfriend. Normally something like that would only be notable if it was mostly made up of expletives, but in this case, the two seemed to be on good terms. On the other hand, it jokingly mentioned the time they met . . . when she fooled him into thinking she was a man. With an opening like that, there was really no way to keep people from trying to fill in their own ending. Someone had already drawn mustaches on all the girls on the motor pool's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Ordinarily, that kind of story would have been prime grist for Annie's little corner of the rumor mill. Today, though, she wasn't in the mood. She was still angry at herself, and possibly at Carter Hall, and definitely possibly at Warrant Officer Flint for putting her in that situation. Stupid real life, not conforming to her personal fantasies. Stupid self, letting herself get worked up in the first place.

She glanced up from the strap she was tightening just in time to accidentally catch Murphy's eye. The lean, hungry-looking cook raised an eyebrow at her expression, drawing a scowl from Annie. She automatically expected rolled eyes or a warning look, but instead Murphy sighed a little and gave her a long-suffering, 'you and me both, pal' expression.

"Somehow," he drawled, tightening a set of straps on a jump pack, "I get the idea that you're not having fun with this line of conversation."

Annie's first instinct was to snap, but checked herself. Murphy outranked her . . . and frankly, he hadn't done anything to earn her wrath. If anything, he'd been one of the less irritating parts of her new life, since he worked hard and didn't say much. Hell, he'd even taken watch for her during the move between Pits. Stomping down on her usual attitude, she gave him a weak smile instead. "Maybe," she said quietly, letting the conversation and gossip carry on without her. "I'm sort of starting to rethink this whole G.I. Joe thing, to be honest."

Murphy shook his head sympathetically and scooched a little closer, bringing his work with him. "Don't worry about it," he said quietly. "You're doing fine, kid. I've seen people come and go, but I've bet you got the chops. You just need to hang on a little longer."

"I don't know if I can," she confessed quietly as she reached for the next pack. "It's . . . crazy, Murph. I know, I know, I've already been given pep talks—Chopper and Dusty both took care of that, so please don't try it. I just had one of those 'holy shit, I'm not a nice person' moments, and I don't want this job to make me worse." She paused, frowning. "And please don't report me to that Psyche-Out guy just because everything I just said makes me sound schizophrenic."

"You're gonna see Psyche-Out whether you like it or not," Murphy said dryly. "Actually, if I know my shrinks, he should be 'accidentally' turning up right . . . about . . . _now."_

The personnel elevator at the far end of the motor pool opened, and a figure with wavy blonde hair and a bright green shirt emerged. Annie's heart sank.

"Damn," she said to Murphy. "You _are _good."

"I've been here a long time," he pointed out with a grin. "And you've got that 'I've got a secret mission from up top and am so fucking screwed' look, which means Psyche-Out was about to come down on you." At Annie's shocked expression, he shook his head a little, clearly not fazed. "I told you already. Been here a long time. Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell anyone."

"So in addition to being the best of the best of the US military, you guys are also psychic." She frowned and paused for a moment. "Well, okay, I think I already suspected that." Damn sergeant major. How did he _know _she thought he smelled bad?

The man moved closer, and Annie tried very hard not to look nervous. She thought she recognized him, vaguely: Psyche-Out, all right, the supposed head of the psychological warfare group within G.I. Joe. He was in his early to mid-thirties, wearing fatigue pants with a bizarre quilted green jacket, the whole thing topped off by a modified pair of headphones dangling around his neck. And he was . . . oh Jesus . . . checking something on a clipboard.

She definitely recognized him now. The face wasn't too familiar—blandly good-looking, all-American without the lantern jaw and broken nose that gave Duke's face character—but the hair was: he'd been in the room, one of the observers taking notes, when she was initially being evaluated by the G.I. Joe shrinks. She'd barely remembered him, figuring he was just another junior lieutenant being a spooky Pentagon type, but the hair brought it all back. 1st Lieutenant Kenneth Rich was apparently pulling double duty as Psyche-Out, specialist in psychological warfare and, um, subsonic manipulation of the human brain.

"Afternoon," he said congenially, stopping next to the parachute packing party. "PFC Short Stack? I'm Lt. Psyche-Out. I'll need to speak with you for just a few minutes."

"Oh. Um." What the hell? He was a lieutenant, and he was talking like a person. One more check in the 'only in Joe' column. "Sir? I've been assigned to, uh, chute-packing-"

"It won't take long. High Time?"

The senior 92Romeo nodded at Psyche-Out, and he turned back to Annie. "See? It's fine. Come with me, please?"

Annie did not, in fact, mouth 'help me!' at Murphy as she stood up. She thought about it, though: on her list of preferred ways to spend time, a session with the team's legendary brain-peeler was right down there with unclogging a garbage disposal by hand. Auugh. Ninjas, where were they when she needed them? A little Storm-Shadow-style chaos sounded wonderful right then.

Alas, pointy deadly rescue was not forthcoming. Psyche-Out led Annie into the elevator and pressed the button for the administrative level. Admin, which was otherwise known as the place that nobody under the rank of sergeant ever, ever wanted to go—and now Annie had been there three times in two days, each time with an increasing sense of doom.

Of course, the last two times she'd been seeing Flint. And Flint, at least, was open and honest in his stuck-up way. He had a job to do, he had security concerns, and he viewed Annie as the best way to get information without torturing a prisoner of the United States government. She might not like him, but she had no reason to be scared of him. Intimidated? Hell yeah. Scared? Not so much. He wasn't going to do horrible things to her worldview.

Psyche-Out was a different story. Annie had never thought she'd cross paths with him, but she'd heard all the stories: expert in X and Y weird sciences, leading developer and utilizer of subsonic technology to literally manipulate the human brain, counselor to ninjas and generals. Nobody had mentioned the goofy lime-green quilted jacket, but Annie wasn't prepared to let it fool her for a second. It was clearly an attempt to put people off their guard; she'd done the same thing at the diner when she was twelve, dressing younger than her age and putting flower clips in her hair to make her look like a sweet little girl. The tips had added up accordingly, and Annie had kept the technique on hand as necessary.

But wait. Was that what Psyche-Out was doing? Or did he just _want _her to think he was trying to make himself look unthreatening?

. . . God damn it.

"We're here," Psyche-Out said mildly, blocking the tracks of the out-of-control train of thought. Annie hurriedly pulled herself back to the present and nodded as alertly as she could.

Psyche-Out's office was located down at the very far end of corridor B, in the Outer Mongolia of Admin. Somebody (probably answering to a name rhyming with "Dutch") had hung a little stuffed doll from the knob and given it a miniature set of BDUs. Its head had been shrunk. Psyche-Out ignored the grisly token as he unlocked the office, leaving Annie staring awkwardly at the wall and trying to pretend she hadn't seen it. Had it really been necessary to stitch its mouth shut? Or was this more Joe humor?

Inside, the office was neat, clean, and atypical. There were the usual framed commissions and degrees, but someone had taped up a poster of the Cheshire Cat talking to Alice, and the opposite wall had a heavy red-and-black tapestry with an abstract design that kind of reminded her of an arrow. Or maybe a planaria worm. Several books, including a copy of the Physician's Desk Reference, were bookended by a little Egyptian cat statue and a bust labeled "Hippocrates," whoever that was. Annie strongly suspected that he was the inventor of hypocrisy, but it might not be a good idea to bring that up. Scholarly types tended to get crabby if you got stuff wrong.

Psyche-Out settled himself behind the desk and gestured Annie to sit in the chair opposite. As she sat, gingerly, he opened a drawer and peered into it. He sighed.

Then, after a moment, he carefully extracted a little clockwork spider and a jar of sleepy but definitely alive bees. Annie leaned back in her chair, but the shrink just shook his head. "Very funny, guys," he said wearily to the air vent above his chair, which didn't respond. "Stick to realphabetizing my files next time, will you?"

The vent still didn't say anything. Maybe it was thinking it over.

"Ninjas?" Annie guessed.

"Unfortunately." Psyche-Out opened one of the filing cabinets and, after some thought, filed the jar of bees under B. "Remind me to send those to Beach Head, would you? And yes—Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes like to set each other challenges, and they usually involve my office." He sighed. "You've been here a few weeks now. I'm sure you've seen how annoying they can be."

"Yes!" Annie burst out. "Thank you! Everybody else just waves their hand and says 'oh, that's the ninjas,' but nobody ever thinks about the fact that this is some seriously unhealthy shit and someone could get . . ." The light dawned, belatedly. "Um. I mean. No, sir."

"It's all right. You can be honest here." He closed the filing cabinet. "From the minute you entered this office, I became your personal therapist, and therefore bound by patient confidentiality not to reveal anything that's said within these walls. And it's pretty obvious to me that you need someone to talk to."

Annie bristled a little. She recognized the shrink trick now—with the rest of the Pit playing Bad Cop, all he had to do was throw a little Good Cop in there to get her to say everything she was thinking. No dice, mister. The Official Secrets act was enough to keep her mouth glued shut.

"I don't understand, sir," she said instead. "I'm not sure why I'm here."

"An evaluation," Psyche-Out responded as he settled back into his chair. She half expected him to steeple his fingers menacingly, but evidently he hadn't seen all the right movies. "Everyone who undertakes a special mission for the first time needs to be checked over before the operation can proceed very far. Flint likes his little undercover jobs."

_Possibility of an informer within the Pit, _the now-gone paper whispered in Annie's head. She kept her face studiously blank.

"I don't know what you mean, sir."

"That's not necessary here, 'Stack."

"Short Stack, E3, 4320-9150-92G5."

"Name, rank, and serial number? That's not how the protocol works any more, Annie."

Annie stopped. Frowned. "Sir?"

"Annie, isn't it?" Psyche-Out tapped a closed file on his desk. "Anne Geraldine Gorshin. Born in Hollis Junction, Illinois, and originally employed as a waitress and gofer in the Golden Egg diner?"

"Er . . . yes, sir." Annie swallowed, surprised at how easily one damn proper noun had stopped her train of thought yet again. She was always Annie, or even Anne, to herself. Aggie to her grandmother, who'd been christened Agnes and liked to think that Annie's name was some kind of homage to her. But outside of her head, she hadn't heard her legal name from another human being in . . . Jesus, it felt like years. Had it only been a couple of weeks since she and her bag had landed there in the Land of Weird?

"You need to understand something, Annie." Psyche-Out folded his hands and leaned forward a little, aiming hundred-watt baby blues at her. Annie squirmed, just a little. "Flint has briefed me on your situation. As G.I. Joe's counseling specialist, my job is to make sure that everybody is capable of handling the greatness that's been thrust upon them." He smiled a little, evidently pleased at the cleverness of something he'd said. Annie stared blankly, and he cleared his throat and continued. "Quartermasters aren't typically chosen for field work of this nature, but the demands of G.I. Joe are unique, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't too much for you to handle."

"And what if you do decide I can't handle it?" she said softly. There was an odd, sick feeling growing in the pit of her stomach, and Annie wasn't even sure why it was there.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." He picked up the clipboard, made a couple of check marks on a form, and smiled at her. "Shall we begin?"

* * *

Annie Gorshin was familiar with psychology, in a vague sort of way. It was usually one of the departments touted in college brochures, and people on TV always seemed to be using it to get criminals to confess. The phrase "reverse psychology" and the technique's applications were familiar to anyone who'd ever fought with a brother. And of course, she could milk tips for all she was worth, and back in the day had quite the sideline in ferreting useful gossip out of people. That was the extent of her expertise with the mind.

If she was a psychology kindergartner, though, Psyche-Out had a quadruple master's degree and a tenth-level black belt of shrinkiness to go with it. His words did things to logic, horrible things that poor logic was never meant to deal with, and out of confusion Annie would find herself telling the truth. No, she wasn't sleeping very well. No, she wasn't having nightmares . . . or many, anyway. No, she wasn't having homicidal thoughts about her teammates, aside from the occasional urge to bash someone with a frying pan. No, her family didn't have a history of mental disorders, unless you counted Great-Uncle Kazimier who decided to celebrate his first day in America by getting plastered and wound up taking a long walk off a short pier. No, she wasn't having night terrors. Yes, she'd passed all previous evaluations. Yes, she'd applied to sniper school, but her nervous humming had kept her out. Yes, she'd chosen the Army as a method of earning college tuition. No, she didn't know what she wanted to study yet. Yes, she thought Beach Head smelled bad—wait, what?

"Just confirming that all your senses are in full working order," Psyche-Out said calmly. Nice poker face, shrink: Annie thought he must clean up on game nights.

No, she had never been charged with or convicted of a felony. No, she had never been arrested. Yes, she had once been cautioned by law enforcement—a minor spree of mailbox baseball when she was eleven. No, she didn't believe that good and evil were relative values. She half expected him to ask if she was or ever had been a member of the Communist Party, but it didn't come up.

After almost an hour of intense questioning, Psyche-Out unclipped the papers, rubberstamped them, made a few notes, slid them into a file marked 'CLASSIFIED,' and picked up his desk phone. "Two pigeons in the cannibal kingdom," he said, as if it was the kind of thing people said every day.

Thirty seconds later, there was a knock at the door, making Annie jump. Two MPs were standing there, looking stern, morally inviolable, and scary as hell. She didn't recognize either of them, but their expressions said they were clearly senior graduates from the Beach Head School of Pain.

"Flint ASAP," Psyche-Out said, handing the folder to one. "Beach Head, same," he added, forking over the jar of sleepy bees and the clockwork spider.

"Ninjas?" said the shorter of the two MPs

"Three guesses, and the first two don't count," Psyche-Out responded dryly. The two men saluted and vanished as quickly as they'd appeared, carrying Annie's personal details and a jam jar full of stinging insects as if that sort of thing happened every day. Which . . . okay, it probably did.

"Two pigeons in the . . . ohh," Annie said, frowning. "Pigeons—carrier pigeons. Couriers. And the cannibal kingdom . . . headshrin—er, psychiatrist."

"Headshrinker," said shrink responded with a note of cheer in his voice. "Now, PFC Annie Gorshin, thank you for your time. The orders will be processed immediately, so I suspect you'll be getting a visit from one of Low-Light's people by the end of the day."

Her first thought was that she'd failed the examination and was now going to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Fortunately, her second and third thoughts jumped on the first thought and kept her from doing something she'd regret.

"Sir?" she said instead. She seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

"Sniper training," Psyche-Out clarified, making a couple of notes on a fresh piece of paper. "There's been some concerns about whether you can handle the stress your duties have been placing on you, so I've put my stamp on the administrative request to put you in with Low-Light's classes. Things tend to work fast in Joe when they're not being actively held back; I'd be surprised if you weren't reporting for duty by 0700 tomorrow."

There was a moment of silence.

"I'm sorry, sir," Annie said carefully. "I, um, I don't think I understand. The unit is worried about my mental health . . . so they're going to give me a sniper rifle?"

"On my recommendation, yes," Psyche-Out responded mildly.

"Permission to ask a question, sir?"

"Granted."

"Is this some kind of shrink thing?"

"How do you mean?"

_Like a shrink way of making sure I get killed, _Paranoid Anne whispered in the back of her brain. Paranoid Anne was usually only allowed out during (at home) closing times or (at work) heavy shelling, and Annie didn't like her cropping up so soon in what was essentially a still-friendly situation. She struggled to find a way to explain herself. Psyche-Out, bless him (how often was she going to think those words?), seemed to realize what she was trying to say.

"Is this some complicated scheme to get you into trouble?" he interpreted, a much less psychotic-sounding way of phrasing it. "No, as a matter of fact. But since you've been shanghaied into high-security business, your clearance is being adjusted. And you may find yourself in a situation where that nervous humming isn't going to be an issue."

"But you said—concerns about my, uh, ability to handle stress?"

"Yes, you shoved a Marine under a sink, among other things. Which is why we had this little conversation." Psyche-Out arched an eyebrow. "Unless you'd prefer not to receive any further training?"

"No, sir! I mean—er—I'd like the training, yes sir. I was just confused."

"Dismissed, then." He finished his writing and tucked the piece of paper away.

He didn't have to tell Annie twice. She saluted, but probably set a new land speed record escaping from Psyche-Out's office. The little shrunken-head doll swung forlornly from the doorknob as the door drifted closed behind her.

After a moment, Psyche-Out picked up the phone and dialed a number. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said into the receiver. A pause. "No, I don't think she's 'crazy.' Incidentally, that's not the right word, and you know it. But you don't need me to tell you that this is a highly irregular way of going about things."

Another pause, and Psyche-Out's brow furrowed. "Understood. Sir."

* * *

Annie walked in a daze all the way back to the flight deck. The parachute-packing party was still in swing; as she emerged from the elevator, she could hear Dead Meat's voice raised in what was definitely a prime piece of inside information. Funny, she thought vaguely: members of a super-secret military unit, all doing their bit to continue an operation that could possibly get them all killed, and nothing brought them together like simple cheap gossip.

She rejoined them and got back to work. Murphy shot her a curious look, but she just shook her head and kept working. Funny how quickly things changed, wasn't it? She was just starting to find her feet, and things were changing yet again. It would've been easier to tapdance on sand than keep yourself completely oriented in G.I. Joe.

Sniper training . . . a small smile edged its way across her face, in spite of her confusion. Irony strikes again. A month ago, she would have jumped at the opportunity without hesitation. Now, what with shooting her first man and bringing him breakfast afterwards, she wasn't exactly so sure if she wanted to be a more active part of the war. But it just went to show, didn't it? No matter what, she couldn't be the drama queen she was afraid she'd become. She was just too damn confused and incompetent for that.

It was a good thought.

"You look happy," Murphy observed in a low voice, edging a little closer to her. Dead Meat was currently illustrating his story with some questionable hand gestures.

"I feel good," she said quietly. A hint of the smile still lingered. "I think I just figured something out."

"Weird," Murphy said. "People usually look a lot more brain-fried when they come back from Psyche-Out's office. But if that makes you happy, who'm I to question your insanity?" He paused, apparently struck by a thought. "Wanna help me clean the garbage disposal later?"

She snorted. "Even if I was crazy, Murph, I wouldn't be _that _crazy."


	16. Shot and a Chaser

**Author's Note: **It lives! Again! And behold, I come bearing plot and drama! The latter of which I'm deeply sorry for, incidentally, since Annie was originally intended to be a mainly humorous character. But relax, nobody's wangsting or cutting themselves, I promise.

Thanks again (and again and again) to all my wonderful reviewers, who've been prodding me to make this happen. Twitter gang, you know who you are, and I love you. Thanks also to my big brothers for giving me info on sniper training, military procedures, and general business. The mistakes are all mine, I promise.

This chapter also contains a veiled shout-out to "Action Figure Therapy," a hilarious and highly underrated YouTube series based around classic Joe action figures and their various day-to-day problems. I'm sure you guys will be able to spot it.

**Rating:** T for language.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen: Shot and a Chaser**

* * *

In the United States Army, sniper training was exact and unyielding. It was a privilege, not a right, and everyone who entered the sniper school—whether at Fort Benning, or Camp Pendleton, or even Fort Ticonderoga—was expected to buckle down and do their best without whining. Orders required you to bring extra clothes, because everything _would _be wrecked in the course of the training. It was rigorous, it was painful, and it was designed to make already-excellent marksmen into silent and deadly long-range killers. If you didn't have natural talent, then the only way to make it was to be unwaveringly determined and able to take the punishment needed to mold you.

In G.I. Joe, things worked a little differently.

If you'd been picked as a Joe, it was a fact that you were one of the best. That had been hammered home more than once in the kitchen, where Annie had tried not to gawk at the speed and efficiency of her fellow quartermaster-cooks. How the hell she'd made it past the selection process, she wasn't sure, but there was no denying she was surrounded by talent. The Joes weren't just born soldiers, they were _made _soldiers.

And they had to be ready for anything. The more time she spent in the Pit, the more she saw it: people traded duties, dabbled in other MOS's business, honed their skill sets and acquired new ones. Dusty might be a desert trooper, but he could damn well survive in the Arctic if he had to. Oh, he wouldn't _like _it, but he'd do it, because every Joe had to be multifunctional.

She wondered vaguely if her sniper qualifications had been the real reason Joe picked her, but dismissed it almost immediately. Sure, she'd met most of the criteria: she was a good shot, she had discipline when it was absolutely necessary, and she'd somehow almost gotten into the Ticonderoga sniper school. But good wasn't good enough . . . plus that humming, and some—uh—little temper-control incidents. She wasn't sure if she was relieved when Ticonderoga rejected her.

Now G.I. Joe wanted to hand their newest cook a rifle.

Maybe Annie shouldn't have been surprised. In this unit, temper-control incidents were expected, or perhaps anticipated. (Storm Shadow. 'Nuff said.)

* * *

She expected her first day of additional training to be painful, or possibly hilariously humiliating. She certainly hadn't expected . . . success?

Well, of a sort.

Annie reported to Low-Light at oh-nine-hundred, as soon as she could be excused from the kitchen. The sniper looked her over once, his expression unreadable behind his ever-present goggles, and nodded. "Done the preliminaries?" he said. She had. "Good. Go shoot."

She went to the course—a standard rifle range, only with targets placed much farther out and a variety of perches to shoot from. With no other options, she picked a low sandbag berm and hunkered down, falling into the position that had been pounded into her in boot camp. The rifle issued to her had been, to her surprise, a 1904 Springfield bolt-action piece with a modern scope riveted into the wood. In a way, it surprised her more that it didn't surprise her more. For better or for worse, she was becoming used to the Joe way of doing things.

Over the course of two hours of target shooting, Low-Light said exactly four things to her. "Left shoulder down." "Breathe out on the shot." "Done spotter training? Yes? Good."

And, when she started humming, he crept up on her as silent as death and planted the barrel of his rifle at the base of her skull. "Boom," he said softly. "Dead." Annie yelped like a cat with a yanked tail and jerked forward, her right eye slamming hard into her scope. "Hit Me with your Best Shot" died in mid-hum.

Still, her scores for the day were pretty good. And even if she had to switch to her left eye, because the right one was beginning to swell shut, she'd still survived her first day of additional training without permanent injury or embarrassment. That was a win in Annie's book.

The armory was bustling with activity when she returned the Springfield. Half a dozen quartermasters were gathering up what looked like two of every weapon—Annie, the slightly lapsed Anglican, immediately populated a mental Noah's Ark with rifles and hand grenades—and Storage Vault himself was inspecting a set of low-profile body armor with a frown. Judging by the general shape of the armor, it had been designed for Scarlett, but those were Sgt. Snake-Eyes' favorite uzis that Bad Dog was checking over.

Annie knew better than to distract support personnel when they were doing their jobs. She handed over the rifle for check-in and made a mental note: Sgt. Snake-Eyes and Sgt. Scarlett were going off-base. Probably for something heavy-duty secretive, if she knew anything about the kind of gear that was being readied. And unless Sgt. Snake-Eyes was planning on losing twenty pounds—and about three inches in height—before he shipped out, armor was definitely being prepped for Sgt. Storm Shadow as well.

Which meant that all three of the demon hand-to-hand instructors were, sing hallelujah, going to be gone at the same time! Her mood lifted a little more as she left the armory. Sure, someone else would probably take it over and pound her into the floor, but they probably wouldn't do it quite as efficiently as Burnt Bacon and His Spooky Friends. Freedom!

She did a little dance, booty-shuffling her way back down the hallway and getting surprised looks from a couple of Joes. Not that she cared: protocol didn't require her to salute people she saw in the hall, and it definitely didn't forbid dancing. Or, when she got back to the kitchen, putting on a tape of "We're Not Gonna Take It" and improvising a little awkward headbanging while she made the prisoners' lunch.

Maybe that scope had given her a concussion.

* * *

"You're in a good mood," Hall said darkly when Annie walked in with the lunch tray. "Is someone going to torture me again?"

"Oh, hush." She set the tray down and put her hands on her hips. "You weren't even tortured the first time."

"I was shot!"

"You invaded a secret government installation. That should be considered attempted suicide. Steak sandwich today, yay for you!"

He eyed her suspiciously, then transferred his gaze to the food. The steak sandwich sat there and didn't make any sudden moves. "What's got you so happy all of a sudden?"

"As if I'd tell you. Eat it while it's hot, big guy—few things are more miserable than a soggy steak-on-hoagie."

"You've got a massive shiner. And apparently, brain damage."

"Then I'm in like-minded company, because which of us was it tried to invade that secret government installation again? Come on, eat up. I didn't even put ketchup on it."

The mention of ketchup had apparently come at exactly the wrong time, because Hall's fingers jerked away from the steak sandwich as he'd been bitten by it. "All right, now I _know _you're planning something," he growled, shoving the plate away. "Very fucking funny, right? Feed me crap for days and then you just think I'm gonna roll over and eat this? Right. What's it got in it? Tabasco? Sodium pentathol?"

Annie's jaw dropped, just a little. "You think I'd _drug _my _food?" _she said, almost insulted. It was honestly not something she'd contemplated much in her life . . . aside from the occasional threats of bromide in the breakfast, but really, that never came to pass and it was more like self-defense to even contemplate it. Annie might have been a rank newbie as a sniper, and only good for breaking in floor mats in hand-to-hand, but food was her native language and her weapon of choice. The idea that she might need to drug a dish in order to manipulate someone was practically a challenge to her skills.

Hall just gave her a look that said "duh."

"Well, that settles it," she said, and neatly snatched the plate away from him. "You're too much of a philistine to enjoy this. I'd go give this to Zartan, but he's even more of a jackass than you are. Maybe I'll feed it to Junkyard."

The prisoner reached for the escaping plate, but Annie quickly stepped back out of range, and Hall hissed between his teeth as his own sudden movement wrenched his broken collarbone.

"Bitch," he said. There was heat in it, but not volume: even when pissed off, this was clearly a man who'd learned the hard way not to make his unhappiness known. Unsurprising, Annie thought, when the files on the Baroness had made it especially clear that she was not one to suffer fools lightly but did enjoy seeing fools suffer. If she could get him to yell, she might be close to some kind of breakthrough with him.

"You're going to have to come up with some new insults at some point," she said as she loaded up the tray again. This was technically psychological torture, but she prayed to Beach Head that the higher-ups would give her some slack. Holding a guy's plate out of reach wasn't quite on the same level as starving him, even if both did count as food deprivation. "And I took the time to learn your name, so you should start giving me the same courtesy, Mister Hall. It's Short Stack."

He snorted at that. "Seriously? Whose cornflakes did you piss in to get stuck with that?"

"You know, I really should do something to you for that remark. Oversalt your food every day for a year or something," Annie said airily. "But really, today, I just don't care." She set the sandwich plate back down, and Hall snatched at it, too distracted by the squabbling (and the prospect of lost food) to remember that he'd been suspicious of it in the first place. He took a big bite, made a face, and grudgingly nodded to her

"Hallelujah, we've found something he'll eat," Annie said, letting a hint of dryness creep into her tone. "Remember, you're still on a ton of painkillers, so don't eat too fast or you'll find out why we call it bucket chow."

Hall obediently chewed and swallowed, slowly. He was giving her an odd look, like he was seeing her for the first time—or maybe just not liking what he was seeing.

"You're serious, aren't you," he said. "Absolutely fucking serious."

"I'm serious about a lot of things," Annie said as she finished unpacking the rest of the tray. "Like people not making more work for the janitorial staff. Look out for the salad, it's got mushrooms in it—you aren't allergic to mushrooms, are you? Some guys would rather court anaphylactic shock than admit they have a weakness."

"No, I mean you're serious about being . . . you." He waved a piece of sandwich vaguely in her direction. His expression was strange, perhaps vague constipated. "You're not really that Jaye chick, or anything. Someone like you is working for G.I. fucking Joe."

Annie wasn't sure if she should be offended or not. But something strange seemed to be happening in Carter Hall's head, and getting offended now would definitely derail it, so she just pulled a vague "what the heck are you talking about?" face and picked up the now-empty tray. "Well, if you think ninjas are going to make their own breakfast, you've got another thing coming," she said mildly. "There doesn't seem to be an Honorable Nine Dragons Path of Unburnt Toast or anything."

"Fucking oblivious," he muttered. Still, as he chewed, there was a new look dawning in his eyes that she had never seen before. He was . . . realizing something? Realizing, or perhaps contemplating. Wheels were turning in his head, conclusions clicking into place, and his expression as he stared at her was complex and hard to figure.

Annie had seen enough brooding and bitching over coffee to know that a person shouldn't be disturbed when they were trying to reorganize their view of the world. She just gave him her best waitress smile and turned away, tray in hand.

As she put her hand on the door, she heard a rustle of sheets.

"Hey, Pancake," he called out. She half-turned to look at him.

"Yeah?"

He was sitting up a little straighter, sandwich still half-eaten in his hand. His brows were furrowed. "Do you like the people you work with? The kitchen staff?"

"Yeah, I guess I do. It's nice to have someone to share the crazy with."

His lips twitched for a moment, but whatever was occupying his mind seemed to overwhelm the moment of amusement. "I feel sorry for them."

"And we all feel sorry for you, you poor deluded bastard. Why do you think you got good chow today?" She opened the door and slipped through, tray in hand. "Bon appetit!"

Hall half-opened his mouth, apparently about to say something, but she closed the door before he could get it out and he subsided back onto his pillows. Annie smiled a little to herself, nodded to the boys on guard duty, and headed back on up to the kitchen.

* * *

Lunch proceeded without incident . . . mostly. Three greenshirts, two Marines, and a SEAL took Chopper's signature bite-sized meatballs as their cue to start a food fight, resulting in Annie and Eighty-Six nearly getting hit with ballistic pastrami. As both women ducked behind one of the steam trays, they heard a very familiar bellow, two crashes, and a moment of silence. Sergeant Major evidently objected to having his lunch interrupted.

"Six for KP," Eighty-Six whispered. Annie grinned a little.

"Can you blame 'em? The ninjas are leaving!"

Eighty-Six elbowed her. "Not evrabody has th' same hate-on f'ninjas as you do, 'Stack." She frowned a little as the rest of Annie's words caught up with her. "An' what d'you mean?"

In a few brief whispers, Annie related what she'd seen in the armory. Eighty-Six crossed herself as she carefully poked her head out from behind the steam table, but made no further comment. Annie knew her fellow QM well enough by now to make a guess at what she was thinking. 1) Quit picking on the defenseless scary walking weapons (none of the other quartermasters seemed to grasp that when as hopelessly outclassed as Annie was, her only weapon was passive-aggressive sniping), and 2) Oh God, this is only going to get worse, isn't it?

On that second point, Annie knew she would agree. When the ninja's away, the trainees will play. She'd put good money on seeing more food fights soon.

* * *

Annie was washing up some personal dishes when, at about two o'clock in the afternoon, the first sign of trouble appeared in her day.

One of the benefits of being a quartermaster-cook was that, if you could tune out kitchen noise, you would have plenty of time to think. In the wake of the lunchtime fiasco, there were indeed several new sheepish soldiers on KP, one with a black eye rapidly turning into the equal of her own. (Evidently, trying to flee from the wrath of a superior officer was a bad idea when the floor was covered with slippery foodstuffs.) Beach Head had issued specific orders about them being given the dirtiest cleaning jobs available, and that left the quartermasters with a sudden surplus of labor. Annie only had a few dishes—all from her own lunch—to clean up, and was standing at one of the smallest sinks, sponge in hand while she wandered vaguely in her own thoughts.

Dammit, she was almost out of soap. Frowning, she put down the sponge and opened the nearest cupboard. Chopper typically stored his personal supplies in there (like his special, touch-and-die supply of Indian saffron) but officially, it was where the little sundries for the sink were kept. Dish soap, dishwasher liquid and cleaner, disposable rubber gloves, fresh sponges, skin moisturizer and all the rest. Which didn't explain why there should be, hidden behind two bottles of Amaretto and a pencil cup in the shape of a dog, a box of bullets.

Her frown deepened as she pulled it out. It was a standard box of ten, each one copper-tipped, and there was a receipt taped to the lid. No name on the receipt: whoever bought them had paid cash. Suddenly paranoid, Annie shot a quick glance over her shoulder, but the KPs seemed to be occupied with their jobs and half of the quartermasters wouldn't be back until the dinner rush started. Nobody was watching as she tipped a handful of the bullets into her palm.

Yes, there they were, the exact same kind as she had found in the steam tray so many times. These were newer and had no marks on them . . . at least not from ever being loaded into a chamber. Each one was scored around the middle, just below the point where the copper met the brass jacket, and someone had carefully numbered them in smeared marker. Four digits, too, so unless their owner had already gone through bullets zero to seven hundred and four, the numbers were actually dates.

Her breath caught a little in her throat, but her expression remained placid. Good waitresses, and good soldiers, never let their feelings show. She slipped bullet 0719 into the pocket of her BDUs, pushed the box back into its hiding spot behind the other miscellany, and topped up the dish soap as if nothing had happened. Work now, paranoia later.

"Where're you headed next?" Chopper called out as Annie dried the last of her dishes. She jumped just a little, but the big cook was looking at her as mildly as ever. Worry prickled at her for a moment—for what she didn't know—but she shoved that aside, too, and pulled a face at him.

"I got my wish," she said, "and of course, it's gone horribly wrong. Sniper training apparently equals tons of extra shooting time. Who'd've thought?"

Chopper grinned, the effect only slightly spoiled by the tenderizing mallet in one hand. "That's what you get for trying to abandon us," he said faux-mockingly. "Have fun, and don't tease Low-Light too much. Even ninjas can't kill you from the next county."

"_Yet," _Annie pointed out wryly. She ducked out before Chopper could ask any more questions.

Back in the bunkroom, she carefully made sure she was alone before pulling the single bullet out of her pocket. The more she looked at it, the more she didn't like it. Who would number a single stray piece of ammo like this, and why? Was it actually a date, or could it be a time? The bullets she'd found in the steam trays hadn't been numbered . . . but as her fingertip slipped on the sleek casing, a little of the marker smeared away, and she had her answer. Floating in the inevitable half-inch of water that collected in the trays, any marker would have been washed away.

That line on the casing was worrying her. A moment's fumbling in the disaster kit under her bed produced a diver's flick knife: not strictly standard issue, but Joe was so far past "standard issue" that it was actually coming back around on the other side of it. Tongue between her teeth, she carefully worked the thinnest edge of the serrated blade into the line on the casing. One cautious wiggle, then another, and the tip of the bullet began to slide off.

Paper, impossibly thin and yellow-white, spilled into her lap. There were rolls of it, each one no bigger around than a small pencil, wound tightly and stuffed into the hollow jacket of the bullet. Annie let out a silent gasp as the little pieces unrolled: there had to be several feet of it, in strips half a thumbnail wide.

Cautiously, she touched it. It was onionskin, the stuff they printed Bibles on, and felt strange under her fingertips. When she lifted one curling strip up to the light, a pattern of punched holes could just barely be seen. Like Morse code, almost, but Annie could read Morse and this wasn't it.

Bullets in the steam tray . . . bullets in the kitchen . . . bullets in the kitchen containing, what, _messages? _For who?

A chill ran down her spine. _Hey, Pancake, do you like the people you work with?_

Flint had wanted her to investigate a lot of things. Prod the prisoner, find out what she could about faction dissonance in Cobra or what the Star-Vipers were up to. The possibility of an informant within G.I. Joe was the one she'd liked the least, and fortunately, there had been nothing really to focus on until now. But she'd been finding bullets since her first days at the old Pit, and now she was looking at a bullet with something in it that seemed an awful lot like a message of some kind. Who would be passing messages inside the Pit, and via steam trays, of all ways?

Unless . . . well, everyone went to the steam trays sooner or later. Officer and enlisted, man and woman, human and Ranger, they all moved through the chow hall three times a day to get their food. Even General Hawk turned up occasionally, and he probably could have retained a private chef if he really wanted. If you wanted to pass a message to someone, in a way that nobody would pay attention to, a stray bullet in the trays was perfect. For a group that dropped betting tickets, shuriken, and the occasional lucky dried snake's head, bullets were nothing noteworthy. Unless you were on the lookout for them.

Annie groaned and dropped her head into her lap. Speculation, that's all this was. She found one bullet with something hinky in it, and suddenly she was weaving webs of conspiracy, like those people who'd once picketed the diner because the Freemasons were controlling their thoughts via a certain brand of egg. Somebody was probably playing a joke on her—happily winding her up with the full knowledge that her own suspicious nature would drive her up the wall.

Her mouth tightened at the thought. Flint had still told her to be on the lookout, and dammit, this was weird enough to bear investigating. She hastily stuffed the bisected bullet into her foot locker, rolling the papers up as best she could and hiding it in the feminine-hygiene box. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she had another bullet still left in the bottom of that same box, but she could examine it later. For now, she had some questions to ask.

Guard shifts on the prisoners would be changing any minute now, so she figured it was the best time to make her presence known. Stopping quickly into the kitchen to grab a half-pint of ice cream (if anyone asked, she could claim she was trying to bribe her target back to the side of the law), she hurried down the long corridors straight towards the detention cells.

"Detention cells," she muttered, sticking a disposable spoon into the ice cream and taking an experimental mouthful. Mmm, cherry vanilla. "Why didn't I ever notice that before? I'm living in a Star Wars movie."

_You're trying to distract yourself, _her mental Annie told her.

_Shut up, _she explained back.

There were no guards on Hall's cell door: probably the replacement had ducked around the corner to go to the can, or something. It wasn't unheard of for less-than-priority prisoners to occasionally get less-than-priority guarding, even in G.I. Joe. Someone was going to have a hot date with Sergeant Major, explaining that one . . . She laughed, and took another spoonful of ice cream, trying to quiet her nerves.

The lunch plates were sitting quietly next to the bed, clean and empty. At least he'd liked his lunch, she thought vaguely. Though maybe it hadn't sat well with him: he was lying as flat on his back as he could get, eyes closed, sheets pulled up, and looking vaguely constipated.

"Hey there, Hawkman," she said, because Annie might be sneaky but she never claimed to be subtle. "How're you feeling? Did you eat too fast?"

Hall just pulled the sheets up a little more and grumbled something. Only the top of his head was poking out of the blankets now.

"I brought ice cream," she offered, holding up the carton. "Okay, I might've sampled it a little, but sue me, this is new territory for me and an enemy of the United States government can't expect pristine virgin Breyer's. It's cherry vanilla, though."

"Fuck off," Hall mumbled. Annie took a few steps forward. The little skin she could see was pallid and sweaty, and he seemed to be breathing too heavily. Either he was engaging in a little personal time—not a thought she wanted to contemplate—or something was really wrong with her prisoner.

"Hey," she said softly. "What's wrong? Do you need me to get the medics down here?"

One hand emerged limply from the next of blankets, landing on the edge of the bed. The crescents of the nails were beginning to turn blue.

"Oh Jesus." Annie dropped the ice cream. "Grandmother, what . . . what blue nails you have. Jesus! Hold on, Hawkman, I'll get the docs-"

Then something like an iron band closed around her wrist, and the world went wrong.

Something flew past her face, but Annie couldn't focus on it, because something else slammed into her gut with the force of a speeding eighteen-wheeler. She crumpled to the ground, knees simply giving out underneath her, as her breath was crushed out of her by the force of the blow. A hand grabbed the back of her collar, and she was jerked violently forward, her forehead crashing into the steel-bolted frame of the bed. Stars exploded in front of her eyes. The hand released her and Annie fell sideways, her face and chest one mass of throbbing pain.

She couldn't focus. She couldn't see. She couldn't stand. Oh, God, fuck fuck fuck, what was-? She tried to take a breath, but her ribs screamed in protest, and the floor seemed to be slipping out from under her.

Hands trembling, eyes watering, she forced herself to raise her head. The fractured shape that was Carter Hall was getting out of bed, ripping away the IVs and monitor cables he had been hooked up to.

Something cool and wet was puddling against her cheek, and she thought she smelled vanilla.

Then Hall straightened, and his form rippled. Strange shapes ran up and down his body as the hospital gown melted away, replaced with a prisoner's uniform and desert combat boots a size too small. A hand reached down to grab her collar again, and Annie's world reeled around her as she was pulled up to stare into dark, black-diamonded eyes.

"The better to sucker you with, my dear," Zartan said bemusedly. "Ice cream? _Really?"_


	17. Break Time

**Author's Note:** In which Annie has a bad day, Doc arguably has a worse one, concussions suck, dead men tell no tales, and the plot thickens yet again.

I know things are getting confusing. All will be explained.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.

**Disclaimer:** G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen: Break Time**

* * *

Anne Geraldine Gorshin came from a long line of farmers, store clerks, hired labor, and moonshiners. The extended family was scattered through tiny towns in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, and most of her people had been farming since the Civil War. (Except for her Gorshin grandparents, who'd been dirty immigrants. Good thing, too; most of those towns had populations of about two hundred, and if one more couple had gotten hitched, the whole place would've been related by blood or marriage.) Farms were the lifeblood of the Midwest, and could always use a good caustic alcohol: to clean tubs and wounds, to trade for favors or equipment, to help along a bonfire, and sometimes even to drink. By the time her family got out of farming and into restauranteering in the late '50s, the golden days of Prohibition and backyard stills were over, but family traditions died hard. Until she'd gone into the Army Annie had never used a cooking wine she'd hadn't made herself.

And that stuff packed a punch. You could drink Annie's homemade Tiger (so called because it was bright orange and ready to kill), but you woke up eighteen hours later with a mouth that tasted like old carpet and a headache so bad you were blind for two days. Nothing promoted sobriety and drug-free living like a shot of homemade hell.

Compared to Zartan, Tiger was a lightweight.

She was dangling from his grip, almost completely limp with pain and confusion. Scattered scraps of hand-to-hand training flashed through her mind, but none of them seemed to apply—not when she could barely breathe, let alone move. Her vision blurred again.

"Let's make this fast, private," Zartan said. "What did the Viper tell you?"

"You don't-" she managed, then erupted into a coughing fit. Zartan's grip eased just that little bit, and Annie tried to force more air back into her lungs. He was still holding her off the floor, as easily as Darth Vader strangling a captured Rebel, and oh she really _was_ in _Star Wars_ and wasn't that a funny image to have in this situation? "You don't know?"

"Why do you think I'm asking?" He lowered her, just a little bit, and the very tippy-toes of her boots touched the ground. Just enough to take some of the pressure off her neck, but not nearly enough for decent leverage, and her muscles were still weak as a kitten's. "Talk quickly, and you might live long enough to go back to the regular Army. Understood?"

"I can't _breathe-_" With a scowl, he lowered her again, leaving her feet flat on the floor. Her knees buckled: she still couldn't stand. She had to hang on until she could. Hopefully keep him from killing anyone until the Joes figured out something was wrong, that Zartan was out of his cell, and that Carter Hall . . .

Her stomach lurched. "Where's Hall?"

"The Viper's out of the picture." Zartan nodded his head, ever so slightly, towards the bed. The only place in the bare-ass room with enough space to stash a body under. Evidently, Carter Hall hadn't lived very long after that steak sandwich.

Annie was not in the position of cooking peoples' last meals. Sometimes it happened accidentally, like in Afghanistan, but that was war and one massive meal for hundreds of men and women. But no more than two hours ago, she'd debated over her choices and picked steak-on-hoagie, because it was good solid food and not likely to disagree with Hall's painkillers. He'd been a good prisoner, sort of. Good prisoners got good meals, and even if she was no Roadblock, she tried to make it palatable. She'd made his last meal, and then Zartan had killed him.

Murdered him? Was it murder in war? _Was_ this a war?

It had been for Hall, apparently. She swallowed with an effort and tried not to be sick.

"Hey," she said, because she needed to do something and right now her only weapon was her mouth. "You can walk."

Zartan raised an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly wrinkling the diamonds. "People don't pay much attention to you when they think you've got amusing injuries."

"_Think_ you've got?" Annie said. He already thought she was dumb; now it was a business of walking a fine line between 'distractingly annoying' and 'liability.' "I saw the bucket chow list. You had to have emergency surgery, and they put you on a ton of painkillers-"

The chameleon's expression darkened, and he shifted sideways, slamming Annie's forehead into the wall. Her ears rang, and for a moment, her vision blurred and went white. Zartan was saying something, but the clanging and throbbing pain in her head wiped out his words.

Slowly, as if a radio signal was fading in from a long way away, they began to bleed back. " . . . een dead a long time ago," he said as she shook her head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears. "Even my Dreadnoks know when to keep their traps shut."

"No sense of humor," she wheezed. Something trickled down her left cheek. Blood? Even shallow scalp wounds bled like a sonofabitch.

"Oh, I've got a sense of humor," Zartan said. "Problem is, nobody seems to share it. What did he tell you?"

"Lots of stuff." She coughed. Something had torn in her throat, and she felt like she might to pass out, but that wasn't going to happen. Who would make their pancakes if she died? Murphy was a good starch man, but he was terrible with breakfast. Didn't even know the trick for faking buttermilk batter on a budget. Well, shit, were these really the thoughts that were running through her head? So much for focus and training.

"Such as . . .?" Zartan drew the last syllable out delicately, and when she didn't answer, he dropped her. Annie tried to scramble away from him. Not fast enough: he was on her before she could so anything more than flail like a panicky hamster, wrenching her over onto her face and planting a knee in the small of her back.

"I'm on a schedule," he said calmly. "So here's how we're going to do this. Every time you say something that isn't helpful to me, I'll break a bone. Understood?"

"Yusss," Annie managed to say. Difficult when her face was squashed into the concrete. With a wince, she managed to turn her head, resting her left cheek on the cold floor.

Carter Hall's body stared back at her.

"Shit!"

Despite Zartan's warning, the word left her mouth automatically. Hall's head was wrenched at an odd angle, purplish bruises rising on skin that was even paler and more sickly now that there was no blood in it. Judging by the boot prints on his prisoner pajamas, Zartan had shoved him under there with more than a little haste and a couple of kicks. The bedclothes, disturbed by the shapeshifter's escape, had moved just far enough to expose the staring eyes.

"Fuck," she added, the word still slurred by her awkward position. Tears beaded in her eyes, but she'd swear until her dying day (about five seconds from now) that they were just because of the pain. Not at all because when you spend a couple of days alternately bitching out a prisoner and making him special meals, you get kind of . . . not attached, maybe, but used to him. Like a pet. Yeah.

"Talk," Zartan said flatly. "They were obviously using you to milk information out of him. Nobody would suspect the motormouth with the tray. Not a bad plan, for Joe. What did he tell you?"

She had to say something. Another denial might get her killed. Unable to tell the truth, knowing he might easily detect a full-on lie, Annie went for the service industry's favorite form of half-truth: the overly broad claim.

"Talked about a plan," she managed. Technically true. "Mentioned . . . mentioned Cobra higher-ups. Really pissed." She took another breath and licked her lips. "He was mad. Lots of, uh . . . " Another wheeze for breath. Not quite necessary, but a perfect stalling tactic. " . . . lots of complaining. He said he didn't think his guys were being used right."

Zartan grunted. "And what did they ask you to get from him?"

"They wanted me to ask him . . ."

"Well?" Zartan drawled.

"About the attack." Again, technically true.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the answer he wanted. Zartan grabbed her left arm. There was a twist, and a sick wet crack—like someone had snapped a whole handful of used popsicle sticks. Something seemed to run down Annie's arm, hard and hot and sharp, and she realized dimly that her hand was hanging at a strange angle. Pink spots bloomed on her skin as he released it, but when the arm landed back on the cold cement, it didn't seem to be cooperating. She tried to move it. Her fingers twitched, but that was it.

"You broke my arm," she said confusedly. "You _broke _my _arm."_

"Forearm," he corrected. "A simple non-displaced fracture. Six weeks in a cast, if you stop stalling and answer me right now. If not, we can try for a compound fracture."

It was too weird. Logically, Annie knew she should be feeling pain right then. The rest of her already was: her head was throbbing, and she would be black-and-blue sooner rather than later. Aside from the rapidly pinking finger marks on her arm, and maybe a little swelling, it looked . . . it looked like an arm. She'd seen the movies and TV shows. She should be clutching it and screaming right now. Instead, everything seemed to be happening through a thick layer of cheesecloth, like some part of her brain was out of the picture.

Zartan wasn't helping. He was some kind of international terrorist, ninja-trained to within an inch of his worthless life, and he'd just _broken her arm. _Yet he still hadn't even raised his voice, and knew the different types of bone fractures. He sounded educated, sarcastic, a bit like Sgt. Storm Shadow. It didn't fit into her terrorist-shaped headspace.

She blinked, and Carter Hall's wide, staring eyes came back into focus. He had pink on his face too—no, more like purple now, in the spots where blood was collecting as his face pressed against the floor. He was looking to the left, even while she looked to the right, and their eyes met.

_She'd made him a goddamn steak sandwich._

Annie threw her one good elbow back as hard as she could. Maybe he wasn't expecting it, maybe he was still slow from all the caffeine and sleeplessness and surgery and bullshit, maybe her lord and savior Beach Head had smiled on her, because Zartan had one knee pressed into her back and the other on the ground, and he was in a perfect position to have one crucial shape involuntarily shifted.

Bullseye. Zartan didn't seem too pleased about his little friend's new form, though, because he let out a strangled squawk and doubled up, clutching his personal bits. Annie yelped as his chin hit the back of her head, and the world went white and blank again.

* * *

As she swam back to consciousness, she became aware of a number of other factors. Instead of the staring eyes of Carter Hall, there was a pair of feet in her direct vision. The dead weight on her back was shifting, but awkwardly, as if someone was pulling it. Voices were echoing in the distance, and somewhere off in the distance, she could hear an alarm shrilling.

The feet were replaced by another pair, this one wearing desert boots with incongruous red BDUs. Annie blinked vaguely, but couldn't focus on anything much beyond the bizarre splash of color in the gray of the cell. Someone was shining a light into her eyes.

"Hall," she said. Her tongue felt like it was made of carpet. "I made him a sandwich."

"You made something, all right," someone said. "Where the hell's Doc? There's blood-"

"Ruptured stitching," the owner of the red legs and desert boots said from above her. Oh, right. Sergeant Lifeline. "Doc's in the infirmary right now. Stretcher, Four-Eyes, get him over there. I want a ninja or a ninja trainee on guard at all times, including in surgery. Call Billy if we have to. Understood?"

"Gotcha," said the first voice, sounding rather reluctant about the whole thing. "That's not gonna be fun, though."

There was a scrape of metal on concrete, and the bed was pulled away. Good: they were retrieving Hall. Hands slid under Annie's arms and hauled her to her feet. The world reeled, and her vision momentarily blurred out again. Through the fuzzy darkness, she heard Lifeline pronounce the prisoner dead.

Somebody half-carried, half-frogmarched her out of the room. It didn't feel like Lifeline—not skinny enough—but Annie didn't particularly care who it was any more. The cheesecloth was getting thicker, and how annoying was that? She should be reacting, doing something, _anything. _She was a trained soldier of the United States Army. She should be jumping up, getting back in the game, kicking ass and taking names . . . or breakfast orders, at the very least. It was time to get shit done! Lead, follow or get out of the way, right?

So said the little voice in her head, anyway. It was like a running commentary from a sports announcer with an extremely personal vendetta, echoing shrilly in the back of her brain while the walls turned from gray concrete to white-painted plastering. Annie had just begin to register the change—not in the basement any more, apparently—when they changed again, this time to the warm tan of the new infirmary, and she found herself sat down on a bed.

It took her a moment to recognize Spirit Iron-Knife, the chill survivalist. She blinked vaguely at him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi. You have a concussion."

"Do I?" She blinked again. "I do. Everything feels fuzzy."

"Lifeline will be here soon. Don't fall asleep."

"Not gonna happen. Mom always said I didn't need any more brain damage." She laughed a little, even though it wasn't funny. Or was it? Maybe a tiny bit. Kind of. "I feel like I should be traumatized."

That got an eyebrow-raise from Spirit, but he didn't say anything, so she elaborated. "You know. My arm's broken, and it's turning purple . . . and greenish," she amended, peering at the limb. "That's new. Would you call that color lime or pistachio?"

After a moment's pause, Spirit examined the arm gravely. "Apple green," he pronounced. Annie cracked a small, loopy smile at his solemn tone.

"You're right. It's like green and yellow, but not yellowy enough to be lime. But why am I talking about green? I got the crap kicked out of me. That's not in my job description, weirdly enough. You'd think it would be. Army and everything. But the crap was kicked anyway, probably because Cobra doesn't read contracts. And I'm not sad or scared. Okay, I'm concussed, but that's sort of a given when you've got a giant Australian biker pinning you down." She paused. "That sounded wrong. Very much not my type."

"That'll come in time," Spirit said. She frowned at that. "It's still sinking in now," he explained levelly. "When it happens, don't be scared. Nobody's happy the first time they get hurt."

"Okay." She propped herself up against the head of the bed and ran a hand through her hair. Blood and melted ice cream came away on her fingers, and she wrinkled her nose. "Not a flavor I'd pick. Blood is metallic and salty—it's gross with sweet cream, unless you were planning to use it as a soup base or a savory cream sauce." She blinked. "Seriously. Yuck."

"I'll keep that in mind," Spirit informed her.

And that was that. The world stretched out, silent and confusing and soft at the edges, and for a few long minutes Annie just zoned out and let it be its confusing silent soft self. She stared blankly at the wall, her eyes open but her brain out to lunch, and focused on the sound of her own breathing. Things passed back and forth in front of her bed, carrying people on stretchers, but it didn't really touch her.

She came out of her daze as a patch of red moved across her vision. Lifeline had appeared, and Spirit disappeared. Very ninja-esque, although since Spirit had never scared the crap out of her, he was still okay in her book. While she pondered the notion of a shamanic ninja, though, Lifeline was gently probing her arm. A bolt of pain shot through it, and she yelped, flinching.

"Sorry," he said. "It's a clean break, though, and there's actually minimal swelling. We'll take some x-rays and then put a cast on it, okay?"

" . . . okay." Annie forced herself to focus. The world was sharpening again, the colors bleeding back in. A little. "I still feel weird in my head."

"We'll need to examine that, too, but you should be all right if you don't push yourself. You'll be in overnight for observation." He frowned and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Will I have to threaten you with vacation time to make you stay put?"

To her own surprise, Annie laughed. "Normal people stay in bed when the world's spinning."

He checked her pupils. "Is that what it feels like?"

"No. No, I was joking. But I'd like bedrest, please. Lots of bedrest. And to not have to make any bucket chow while I'm here."

"Considering that you're not even allowed on PT for the next week-" Annie grinned, tempted to throw a pair of heavy-metal devil horns "-I don't think you'll be in the kitchen for a day or two. And remember, if you feel any strange weakness, fading vision, anything like that—tell me." He stepped back and made a note on some kind of chart. "Okay. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Um." Annie frowned. "None?"

"Very good. You'd be surprised how often people get that wrong. What's your name?"

"Legal or military?"

"Legal."

"Anne G. Gorshin."

"Where are you from?"

"Hollis Junction, Illinois. So cosmopolitan, we've even got a gas station."

"Sarcasm, good." He made another note on the chart. "And before you ask, yes, there's a box for that," he added, even as Annie's mouth opened. "I managed to talk the general into getting us customized forms. There's a box for _everything_."

The notion was oddly comforting.

They ran through several more questions, establishing that Annie's brain wasn't too badly bruised, and then she was whisked off for scans and x-rays. At one point she saw Doc, who was stripping out of a pair of used surgical gloves and looking wry as he made a few notes on a chart of his own. Zartan, evidently, was going to pull through, and Doc had a new story about his rather unique job.

"Hey, sergeant?" she said as one of the lab techs unwrapped the lead x-ray cape from her shoulders. "How did Zartan get in there? To Hall's cell?"

Lifeline frowned a little. "I don't think you should be worrying about that right now. One thing I've learned in this job is that giving people any excuse for blaming themselves retards the healing process . . . and increases the number of patients I have to drag out of air vents."

Her stomach dropped. "It was my fault?"

"No, I meant that people will blame themselves whether I—never mind. No, it wasn't your fault." The sergeant shook his head. "He had help. Somebody rearranged the guard schedules to give him a five-minute window, and put a video loop on both cells to make it look like he was still in his. Once the window was over, the alarm was raised, but it was still pretty close. It's a good thing you kept him talking."

"Couldn't exactly kick his ass." Annie lurched a little as she was guided back to the bed. "Can I have some painkillers? Please? I'll be good. But this is starting to . . . um . . ." She wasn't sure how the sentence was supposed to end.

She got painkillers. She got water. After what felt like several hours of waiting, her arm was put into a temporary plaster cast and she was ordered to rest. She'd still be woken up every fifteen minutes and forced to answer questions about first names and fingers held up, but right then, sleep still sounded heavenly. She didn't even bother to kick off her boots before burying herself under the starchy infirmary sheets and dozing off.

* * *

It was well into evening by the time Lifeline and Doc entered General Hawk's office. Flint was already there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Both the surgeon and the medic took chairs, but Flint stayed standing: he looked tense. General Hawk was reading through some paperwork, and just nodded to the newcomers before going back to it.

There was a knock on the door. After a moment, it opened again, and Psyche-Out slid in with a file in his hands. Lifeline and Doc were already occupying the only available chairs, so he perched himself on the windowsill. Duke followed.

After several long moments of silence, Hawk turned over the last of the paperwork and looked up. "Well?" he said to Psyche-Out.

"At risk of sounding unprofessional, general, I'd like to say that I called it." Psyche-Out tapped the folder he was carrying. "We had the man you suspected under twenty-four hour surveillance, and he wasn't anywhere near Zartan's cell when it happened. Either he's innocent, or there's definitely another agent involved."

"So much for smoking out the traitor," Flint said sharply. "Having the 92G poking around was just supposed to push him into making his move. Once we had proof that he was the one passing information to Cobra, we could shut this mess down once and for all. Instead, it turns out we've got an _extra_ mole in the ranks?"

"I warned you about that," the psychiatrist pointed out. "His profile doesn't indicate that he's the type to act alone. At least we didn't lose anyone, and Zartan's safely back in his cell."

"In the infirmary," Doc corrected. "And for the record, gentlemen, I definitely didn't enlist for the purpose of seeing enemy combatants take repeated savage blows to the testicles."

There was a moment of awkward silence. Nobody crossed their legs, but the thought was obviously there.

"So what now?" Flint said finally, looking to General Hawk. "I don't think we'll be getting any valuable intel out of Zartan any time, sir. The man we thought was the traitor didn't so much as twitch, either, so there's no way we can shut him down—not legally." From the expression on his face, it was easy to see that he didn't like having to wait for 'legally.' Warrant officers never appreciated being jerked around, especially by regulations.

Hawk looked at Lifeline. "How's Short Stack?"

"Broken arm, concussion, shock," Lifeline recited. "The whole thing will probably take a day or two to sink in, and there'll likely be some delayed mental trauma as well."

The general nodded and looked to Psyche-Out. "Did she like Hall?"

"Hard to say, sir. But the tapes definitely show that she was getting him to talk."

"Which means she'll be angry." Hawk leaned back a little, surveying the assembled men. "Psyche-Out, I want you to visit her in the infirmary. Then downgrade her clearance: take her off sniper training, restrict her access to secured areas. Official policy is that she's been compromised. Not to be trusted."

Psyche-Out frowned. Then his eyebrows leaped as he made the connection, and he nodded. "That should do it, sir."

Flint glanced back and forth between the two of them. "Sorry, sir, but what the hell's going on?_ She_ isn't the traitor, is she?"

"No. But she's the opposite of a good soldier." Psyche-Out's tone was blunt. "That makes her an excellent stalking horse. Loud, angry, attitude problems likely stemming from a deep-seated inferiority complex . . . the downgrade will rankle her, and she'll spread it around with a big shovel. With her making that kind of noise, the mole or moles won't be on the lookout for the rest of us."

"And what if he figures it out?" Duke said, his expression grim. "As you said, she's not subtle."

"Then he'll toy with her. Trust me, gentlemen; this is a target he won't be able to ignore. He's happy that he's been able to sneak around under our noses for so long, and seeing someone who wants to take him down will be irresistible. Her downgrade will be a win for him, because it means the spy we set against him has visibly failed."

"This is too damn political for me," the first sergeant muttered.

"'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.'" Flint, of course. He rubbed his face, adjusted his beret, and sighed a little. "I won't lie, general. I'd be a lot more comfortable if we could just grab our suspect and grill him until he spilled his guts."

"Me, too," Hawk said. "Believe me. But he might not even know who the other man is, and the Jugglers have been looking over my shoulder ever since Pitfall. We have to play this subtle for a little while longer." He leaned forward, planting his hands on the desk. "Find the moles, gentlemen. Find out how they're communicating with each other and with Cobra. Don't trust anything that looks too obvious. And don't let Short Stack back in the kitchen for at least three days, because I suspect the downgrade is going to have a bad effect on the pancakes."

* * *

She blinked. The ceiling failed to blink back, or do anything extraordinary.

_Something big happened last night, _her brain informed her, but it didn't see fit to remind her exactly what. Her arm was in a cast, and something about that niggled at her. It was connected to the big thing, whatever it was. But the big thing was also a bad thing, and Annie didn't want to deal with that. She settled for staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to make any sudden moves.

Somebody had taken off her boots, but everything else was still accounted for. Good. Her damp hair told her that her scalp had been sponged clean . . . which was a good thing too.

She ran the fingers of her good hand through her limp hair, and found a spot they'd missed. It was sticky, but not blood-sticky. When she sniffed her fingers, they smelled sweet. Vanilla?

Oh. Right.

Annie pulled her knees up and rested her forehead against them, trying to ignore the dull throbbing in her arm. Everything still felt blessedly distant, though she was willing to guess that that was the effect of the pills Lifeline had put her on. Trying to focus, she considered her options.

She could wallow in self-hatred, which didn't sound like too much fun. There was something comfortingly indulgent about crying and throwing a tantrum over something going wrong, but the calm fuzzy world of concussions 'n' drugs counseled her against it. What would be the point? Alternately, her brain proposed, she could get angry and possibly do something stupid. She liked that second one, but she didn't know if she could get angry again. Those were some good pills, whatever they were.

There was a scraping noise as the door was yanked open. Then footsteps, and the rattle of a tray. They sounded familiar, but shouldn't have been so distant. Why?

Bucket chow. Someone was coming down to bring bucket chow to the infirmary, and _it wasn't her. _The world really had gone all weird and upside-down.

A tall, broad-shouldered blond man was picking his way between the rows of beds. He had a bristly yellow beard and the huge, distinctively callused hands of a heavy machine gunner, and the tray he carried looked tiny in his massive paws. Definitely not one of her KP monkeys or a quartermaster. It took a moment for memory to flick a card: Rocky? Rockwell? Rock'n'Roll, that was it. He'd been scheduled for dishwashing last she'd heard, thanks to something the duty log would only refer to as 'car surfing.' Evidently he'd been reassigned since her incapacitation. The tray held chicken soup, shelf-stable bread, and a cup of milk.

"Hi," she said. "Is that for me?"

"Yep." Rock set it down on the bedside table. "You're lucky there's no one else in here right now. The whole base is on high alert, and a guard always gets posted when there's too many people in the infirmary."

"Oh." Annie frowned at the food. Something wasn't right. The bread was _shelf-stable, _and anyone in the kitchen should've known not to give shelf bread to a concussion case. A nasty feeling twisted in the pit of her stomach, and her gaze flicked from the bread to the casual, callused Rock'n'Roll. Rock'n'Roll, who she trusted, and who was bringing her something to eat. A cold chill ran down her spine.

She jerked back against the headboard and scrambled sideways. Rock's eyes widened, and he reached out to grab her good arm, drawing a strangled yelp from Annie. He did grab her—just in time to stop her falling off the bed. For a moment, the world reeled, and Annie couldn't _breathe_—

_Of course. Pitfall._ The world righted itself. She sucked in deep breaths, trying to stabilize herself. Rock was watching her with a concerned frown as she pried her own white-knuckled hands from the bedclothes.

"Just hang on," he said quickly. "I'll go get Lifeline! You're having a seizure or something-"

She shook her head, still trying to calm her racing heart. "I . . . no. No. I just forgot that we aren't making much fresh bread yet." That got a confused look from Rock, and she closed her eyes, trying to focus. "I saw the shelf-stable bread, and I thought it didn't come from the kitchens. I thought you might be Zartan."

Comprehension dawned, along with a grimace. "Sorry," he said, his tone dry, "but I promise I'm not Zartan. It'd be hard to aim with my head that far up my ass."

Annie smiled, just a tiny bit, as her heart rate began to slow. "Thanks for the mental image."

"No problem, greenie." Rock stepped back another couple of paces. "By the way, this is your first time in the infirmary, right? Here's a tip: do what Lifeline tells you. He can get pretty creative when people try and sneak out early." He examined Annie cursorily. "And watch some TV. Stupid TV, with cartoon animals and that kind of stuff. Just do something that cheers you up. You have to keep your head on straight, or they win."

That sounded like the voice of experience speaking. She'd seen Rock around the base—decent guy, always listening to something loud and squealy with lots of heavy guitars in it, tended not to drop things in the steam tray when she was looking. But for a moment, his expression was drawn and haunted, and Annie knew better than to question the voice of experience.

"Received and understood, sergeant," she said. "I think I'll start right now." What else was she going to do, anyway? After a moment's deliberation, she flexed her bruised fingers and half-raised her wrapped-up broken arm from the mattress. "Sign my cast?"

"Sure. Got a marker?"

"Uh . . ." She glanced around the infirmary. "I don't think so."

"Then I'll bring one down when I'm on dinner duty." He gave her a casual salute as he reached the door. "Later, Short Stack."

* * *

He came back at 1800 hours, bringing soup that was too thin, bread completely lacking in taste, and Jello that was an insult to the cows whose hooves it had been made of. He also brought Dusty, though, and ten minutes later her cast sported two signatures, an impromptu game of tic-tac-toe, and a picture of a confused-looking Snow Job riding a camel backwards.


	18. Take Out

**Author's Note:** In which Annie has another bad day, a slight rage blackout, a minor revelation, and an immunity to irony.

A few points regarding this chapter. First, the idea of Dusty's pet is my own invention; yes, I know he had a coyote named Sandstorm at one point, but that was just with one figure release and Sandstorm never made any appearance in the comics or cartoon, so I didn't feel it was really part of his makeup. REMF stands for "Rear echelon mother fucker," i.e., the guys who stay behind at base when everyone else is out risking their skins.

******Disclaimer: **G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Eighteen: Take Out**

* * *

Rock'n'Roll was a sergeant, and Annie merely a lowly private, so she obeyed his orders and tried not to think about what had happened. By the next morning, thirty-six hours after the attack, her cast had accumulated more Joe signatures and several greenshirts', including two who had to write their civilian first names. Apparently, wearing a cast sporting their current appellations would've been violating several dress code and conduct rules. Her favorite (after the camel sketch) was actually a muddy paw print from Junkyard, which had been something of an accident. Getting his booster shots apparently left the Rottie quite frantic and slightly stoned.

Then Psyche-Out turned up, and things took a turn for the enraging. He asked her several dozen questions, poked through her chart, then informed her that her brand-new sniper training was now being suspended while the Zartan incident was investigated. Apparently, she was now part of a _potential security issue._

That, she could almost deal with. She'd only had a couple of days to get used to the idea of extra training, after all, and it wasn't as if she was a resource that Joe absolutely couldn't do without. Under normal circumstances Annie would have waited until the officer had left, spent half an hour pouting and drowning her sorrows in bucket-chow-grade chocolate-pudding-like foodstuff, and then remembered that she was still off PT for a few days and cheered up.

But it turned out that in addition to being a security issue, Anne Gorshin was being banned from the kitchen for three days. That was three days, Psyche-Out made clear, not including her infirmary stay—which meant she could be looking at almost a week before she got back behind the stove. He said some very understandable, official-sounding things about procedures and psych profiles. Things like "regrettable circumstances" and "clinical necessities," with so many disclaimers and notations that Annie had the vague sensation of being reprimanded by a drug commercial. She waited calmly and responded in a reasonable manner while her vision slowly turned red around the edges.

When the door closed behind the officious shrink, though, Annie . . . well, she wasn't sure what was happening. Panic was rising in her chest, for some reason she couldn't quite explain, and clashing head-on with the roaring tide of rage coming the other way. Something seemed to be squeezing her throat: she couldn't breathe. _She couldn't breathe. _She curled into herself and shook, digging her good hand into her bad one until her white-knuckled fingers drew blood. She wanted to scream, she wanted to bite something, she wanted to trash the entire world because if she didn't _nothing was ever going to work again, god motherfucking dammit.  
_

A long while later, when the whole mess was over with and Annie was capable (as she ever was, anyway) of rational analysis, she'd look up her symptoms and realize she'd been having a panic attack. Not something she was prone to, but everyone has their off days. Apparently it fell under the heading of that 'trauma' thing. At the time, though, all she knew was that the world was drawing in on her, everything was going wrong, and she was banned from the kitchen.

That had been the tipping point. _Seriously? _She'd ask herself later, in that aforementioned period of rational thinking. _That's all? _And she'd be incredulous, and a little bit chagrined.

But it was absolutely no exaggeration at all to say that for a long, long time, the kitchen had been the centerpoint of her existence. It was a dumb little thing, maybe, but it was a constant: people always needed to eat. Right from the beginning, she'd been a kitchen rat, destined for a life of subduing people with pancakes and—if she was in the mood—kindness. Now she didn't have a purpose any more. She might as well change her MOS to REMF.

Zartan and that fucking Cobra mole had ruined everything. Suddenly, one elbow to the groin wasn't nearly enough for them.

Annie latched onto that thought and held it. The rage surged, pushing back everything else, and slowly she rose out of the haze of fear. Cobra. Cobra was bad, right? Terrorists. She knew it intellectually, but now she knew it viscerally, and they'd made it personal.

Short Stack was, at the bottom of things, inconsequential. Joe wouldn't collapse if she wasn't there. But in the great kitchen of life, Zartan and his Cobra friends had just tracked raw sewage all over the tiles, and she was going to go after them with the pushbroom of pure rage and make them regret everything they'd ever done to that kitchen, including making her construct a metaphor that made no sense and could probably be chalked up to the drugs.

Gradually, the rage began to draw back as well. It didn't vanish, but just seemed to contract, drawing all its power into a single white-hot coal that smoldered in her gut and flared up a little every time she thought of what had happened. With an effort, she forced her stiff muscles to loosen, and pried one hand off the other. Her blunted nails had left bloody claw marks on her skin, like she'd been attacked by a cat that finally heralded the feline apocalypse by growing itself a thumb. And there were those drugs again.

She glanced around. The infirmary was silent; Lifeline's office door hadn't even opened. It took her aback to realize that the whole thing—panic, anger, determination, metaphors—hadn't lasted more than a couple of minutes, and had happened in complete silence as well.

Perfect. Moving as stealthily as she possibly could, Annie pulled back the blanket and planted her feet on the floor. The world reeled a little, but she gripped the mattress until it passed.

Maybe the ninjas weren't _always _crazy. Maybe they just had shit to do all the time, and couldn't afford to sit on their butts in the infirmary while someone was wrecking their kitchen . . . er, secret ninja hideout. What did they call it again? A dada?

Emboldened by the thought of the ninjas' multiple escapes, she stood up. And promptly fell over.

Between drugs and a concussion, gravity was apparently not her friend.

The office door open and Lifeline emerged, looking worried. When he spotted her sprawled on the floor, he hurried over. "What's wrong?" he said, kneeling down to help her. "You shouldn't be out of bed yet."

Annie gave him a watery grin. "I was looking for the bathroom."

"Really." He'd spotted the bloody marks on her arm. "What happened there?"

"I was scratching an itch," she explained. Lifeline gave her a raised eyebrow dripping with skepticism, but got antiseptic and band-aids anyway.

"You're not supposed to be out of bed," he added as he wiped off the claw marks. Annie tried to look abashed. "I know it's embarrassing, but really, it's best for everyone if you stay put for a couple of days. If you're absolutely allergic to the idea of a bedpan, ask one of the interns to help you to the toilet, all right?"

Annie saluted as best she could, but Lifeline seemed to be reading her mind, because he just gave her another raised eyebrow and a warning stare that made it very hard to remember that he was supposed to be a pacifist. Clearly, pacifism didn't prevent someone from being scary . . . unless that was just a Joe thing. She burrowed down into the sheets and tried to formulate an escape plan.

All right, maybe escape wasn't the right word. But if she was going to get this thing done, she couldn't be spending her time lying around. She knew from long experience that her white-hot rage would only last so long, and once it was gone it would be hard to get back; she had to find out what the hell was going on _now. _Kitchen gossip was the hottest, freshest, most comprehensive gossip to be found anywhere in the armed forces, and now that she was starting to put pieces together, she might know what questions to ask.

Fact: someone had let Zartan out and messed with the cameras.

Fact: the bullets in the steam tray were (possibly) being used to transmit messages.

Fact: the cupboard where she'd found the bullets was usually the province of Chopper, who was himself a former biker with a few questionable incidents in his jacket . . . like Zartan.

However! Fact: no undercover operative would be dumb enough to store sensitive information like that in front of her. Annie was forced to rule out Chopper.

Fact: Hall had been hinting to her that there was something rotten in the state of the kitchen. BUT, fact: the Zartan incident had happened just before dinnertime, when the kitchen was busy beyond belief. She'd only been able to leave because she was bringing Hall his food.

If she was willing to go on what Hall said, she would need to find out which—if any—of the other 92Gs had been AWOL during the dinner rush. If that turned up nothing, she'd look back through the duty logs and try picking out who could've left the bullets in the cabinet. But that meant she had to work fast, while everything was still fresh in peoples' minds.

For a moment, Annie wondered if she should catch Flint up to speed on this. Give some kind of official report to . . . someone, or file a form that said 'Intent to Be Sneaky,' or something. But they'd downgraded her security clearance, taken her off sniper training, sent the shrink after her, and _kicked her out of the kitchen. _With Hall dead, it was clear that the upper echelons didn't give a shit what she was doing any more. Her lip curled, and her thoughts towards Warrant Officer Flint and his ilk were turning distinctly uncharitable.

Well, fuck 'em. Annie basked in the warmth of the little ball of incandescent rage and set about plotting her escape.

* * *

Phase one of Escape Plan Beta commenced around lunch. Rock had worked off some of his bad karma and was no longer on bucket duty, but his place was promptly filled by Ace, who'd apparently been caught hiding rotten meat under Slipstream's jump seat. (He had, needless to say, lost a bet.) Ace wasn't an ideal subject for this kind of thing, but Annie made herself look as pathetic as possible, which didn't hurt.

"Lifeline's pretty tense," she said as Ace set down the tray. "I thought he was a pacifist. Is it always like this with his patients?"

"Pacifist, my ass," Ace responded cheerfully. "I'm surprised he hasn't exploded and killed us all yet. You want to watch the little ones, y'know."

"I guess it's all the people escaping," Annie hazarded. "Is it a Joe tradition or something?"

"You could say that." Ace shrugged one shoulder. "Personally, I like taking my R&R whenever I can, and without having to be strapped to the bed. Not really my kind of party. The commandos don't like sitting still, though. Anyone sitting still is automatically a target, or something."

"Everyone's a target," Annie muttered, surprising herself. It hadn't been part of the script. "But maybe it keeps things interesting for them. Once you've reached the point where you're unstoppable, I guess you have to get your laughs where you can."

Ace eyed her speculatively. For a moment, Annie's heart began to race: was he on to her? But the moment passed, and Ace gave her a lopsided grin.

"Nobody's unstoppable. If they were, they wouldn't get stuck here in the first place, and Lifeline wouldn't be chasing 'em through the air vents."

Hah! She _knew _it. Resisting the urge to glance up at the ceiling, she grimaced and settled further back into bed. "Is everyone in this unit certifiable? I mean, I'm pretty sure I am too at this point, but it's still kind of strange to get used to."

"Pretty much, yeah. Everyone has their quirks. Ninjas do the vent thing, the tech guys like to crack the Pentagon for fun, and the motor pool has a nice thriving trade in offbrand Jack."

Annie made a mental note of that. There had been no call for liquor in the kitchen yet (aside from Murphy's bottle, of course), but if called on, she wasn't sure if she could produce a decent coq au vin or vodka cream sauce using off-the-shelf alcohol. It might be worth talking to the motor pool guys to sound out the general Joe attitude towards bootlegging . . . Once she was sure she wasn't going to die or be kicked out, that is.

Although if she ever _wanted _to get kicked out, building an illicit still would be the way to go. Annie put a pin in that idea and filed it away for future desperate moments.

"Gross," she said instead, wrinkling her nose. "Doesn't that shrink say anything about it?"

Ace shrugged. "I think he's just happy that nobody's blowing anything up. Most of the time, anyway."

She didn't have to fake that grimace. "Right."

* * *

It seemed to take Ace entirely too long to leave. That was another problem with the ball-of-rage method of doing things: it made her impatient, and delays only added to her nervousness and irritation. Worse, something about Ace was setting her nerves on edge. He chatted with an easy geniality that reminded her of Dusty, but unlike Dusty, there seemed to be something going on in his head that he wasn't telling her.

Or maybe it was just that Dusty was openly weird. At this point, Annie was expecting everyone in Joe to be unhinged in one way or another, and Dusty definitely fit the bill; her friends in Laundry had confirmed that, yes, he _did _keep a pet tarantula, and consequently nobody would room with him any more. Ace, though? Ace had a nice smile, a friendly demeanor, and a light, dry humor that would fit in perfectly in almost any situation. He came across as . . . as . . . functional._ Too _functional. It was freaking her out.

"Thank Christ," she muttered as the door finally closed behind him. Her world was still reeling a little, but she'd neglected to take her most recent dose of pills, and things were less wavery when she pulled herself into a standing position on the cot. "Am I the only normal person here?"

It took a bitch of a stretch, but she managed to reach the ceiling and lever one of the tiles out of place. A shower of dust and paint chips came scattering down, and Annie sneezed, brushing dust bunnies out of her hair. After a few seconds' thought, she ripped a piece out of her cheap hospital gown and tied it over her nose and mouth. Her mission might be important, but she wasn't risking Black Lung Disease for the sake of G.I. Joe.

Next came the tough part. She couldn't get a good grip just standing flat on the mattress, so she braced her feet against the top of the headboard, curled her fingers around the edge of the vent, and awkwardly pulled with her one good arm as she flailed her feet against the wall. The sides of the vent bit into her fingers, leaving drops of blood on the edge, and she cursed G.I. Joe, ninjas, shrinks, Ace, Zartan, ninjas, Zartan, her own shitty upper-body strength, Zartan, her stupid fucking arm, Zartan . . .

But the great god Beach Head must have glared upon her, yea, because she barely made it. One final flail, and her head and shoulders were into the vent. She slapped her arms flat against the inside of the vent, tried to ignore the horrible persistent throbbing in her arm, and pushed with all the might left in her good one.

With one final effort, Annie heaved herself completely into the vent and slid the tile back into place. It might buy her a few seconds, but she knew it wouldn't fool Lifeline for long. She'd left too much dust and dirt on the bed. She felt kind of bad about lying to the nice medic, but . . .

Sneezing despite her makeshift keffiyah, Annie peered into the dimness of the vent and tried to determine which direction would take her to the kitchens. Lifeline probably wouldn't understand, either. This wasn't like your usual ninja shenanigans; this had purpose behind it.

"It's no fun, being the sane one," she muttered to herself as she scooted off through the vents.

* * *

Ace stopped his trolley on B Level and poked his head into the nearest bunkroom. Shipwreck, Muskrat, Hit'n'Run, Tunnel Rat and Outback were playing blackjack, while Polly and Max the bobcat glowered at each other from opposite bunks. Tunnel Rat was apparently up, to judge by the large pile of Fig Newtons next to him, while Muskrat made a sour face as he pushed the last of his own stash into the center of the table.

"Greenie, vent escape," Ace called out. Heads turned to him. "Blind bag. Any takers?"

"Five on ten, max," Shipwreck said instantly. "Steen's in a shitty mood, and someone's gonna get tranqued."

"Twenty on twenty," Muskrat said. "He's not going to go crazy over a greenie, right?"

"Depends on how crazy the greenie makes _him," _Tunnel Rat pointed out, absentmindedly eating some of his winnings. "I'm out. No cash until payday."

"What the fuck're you spending it all on, man?" Outback said genially. "Five on twenty, Ace."

Hit'n'Run just shook his head, so Ace collected the cash and did some quick mental math. Blind-bag vent escapes were extreme short-term bets; the minute a Joe got word that someone was trying to get out of the infirmary, usually via air vent, he would take bets from the others without telling them who the greenshirt was or how they were injured. It made things more interesting, especially since the escape attempt was usually over in minutes.

Speak of the devil . . . He poked his head out at the sound of footsteps. Lifeline went stalking past, Stretcher and Kitbag behind him. He didn't look _angry _per se, but there was a distinct little line between his eyebrows that usually meant trouble for people who spotted it. Ace hastily pulled his head back into the bunkroom.

"Book's closed, guys," he called over his shoulder. "'Wreck, I think you're gonna be lucky."


	19. Hertz Donut

**Author's Note:** In which we learn things about vent-crawling, a few things come to light, and Beach Head's PT pays off.

First—obviously my treatment of Lifeline here is inspired in equal parts by CrystalOfEllinon and willwrite4fics, both of whom delight in putting our favorite little medic through the wringer at every possible opportunity. Lifeline's act in the closing moments of the chapter derives from a running gag in Crystal's fics. Secondly, we can all expect this fic to be moving a lot faster from now on; I've got the end in sight, and am raring to finish. This does mean that my other fics are going to get short shrift for a while (I haven't updated RSVP in a donkey's years, and might not 'til this is done) but on the other hand, since this fic has taken over three years to complete, I think any increase in speed is good.

******Disclaimer: **G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.

* * *

**Chapter Nineteen: Hertz Donut**

* * *

She took it back. Everything she had ever said about the ninjas—their sneakiness, their rudeness, their creepiness—she took it all back. Because apparently, they could wear all black, crawl through the Pit's air ducts, and _not get dirty._

Even with her makeshift keffiyah, she could barely breathe. The Pit had at least six subterranean levels, all of them serviced by a massive network of vents and air shafts, and it would've needed a cleaning crew the size of the NFL to keep all of them clean all the time. Worse, the Joes had only recently moved into this Pit, and it had been de-mothballed rather hastily. As she crawled, eddies of dry gray dust puffed and whirled around her, and occasional tumbleweeds composed of dog hair and more of the evil dust went pinwheeling past. Once, her knee went into a strange pool of sticky liquid, which she hoped was oil. _Prayed _was oil, really.

And not only could the ninjas do it cleanly, they could do it quietly, which was proof that they were actually magicians as far as Annie was concerned. Commando-crawling through cold mud was no fun, but the worst mud ever made was the odd 'splup' noise. Every time she moved—every time she _breathed—_the duct seemed to take it personally and would respond with the most godawful rattles and booms she'd ever heard.

At least Beach Head seemed to have anticipated this kind of thing. It was a rare day when his PT didn't involve some kind of weird test or horrific challenge, and Annie had already had the pleasure of traversing his mudpits and obstacle courses with, yes, one hand tied behind her back. Her cast made the most godawful racket imaginable, but it was nothing next to the white-hot pain creeping back into her arm with every motion; it was actually a relief when she was able to stop, tear another strip off the hospital gown, and use it to strap the arm to her side.

She had one other stroke of luck: the ventilation system wasn't exactly quiet itself. Every few minutes the fans would rumble to life in different parts of the Pit, bombarding her with fresh showers of dust but covering most of the noise she made.

As Annie crawled onwards, she hit a sort of rhythm. Push, grip, push, grip, stop, pant, repeat. She tried chanting the sequence in her head until she realized how creepy it sounded and stopped. But the rhythm persisted, and after a while, she seemed to push through the pain and hit some kind of strange calm zone. As long as she kept moving, she'd be okay.

Light bled into the ducts from the vent grilles, giving Annie small glimpses of the rooms beyond. Offices and storage rooms mostly, on this level, but a few bunkrooms as well. One of the empty rooms she passed had a locker with a neat "Lifeline" stenciled on it, and she held her breath and crawled as quietly as possible until she was past it . . . just in case.

Moving between levels was the hardest part. Only the largest vertical vents were intended to be traversed by the maintenance crews, and she had to crawl what felt like miles before finding a suitable one which ran parallel to the elevator shafts. Then came the glorious experience, never to be forgotten or (hopefully) repeated, that was climbing a ladder one-handed up a massive metal tube that echoed with the bangs and rumbles of the ventilation and elevator systems. While concussed.

By the time she slithered back into the horizontal vents, her head was swimming, and some traitorous part of her was wondering if it wouldn't be easier to let the goddamn full Joes handle everything. That was their job, right? They were spies and ninjas and commandos and shit. They had names like Storm Shadow, Rock'n'Roll, and Roadblock. They ate traitors and terrorists for breakfast. (Well, not literally. They ate waffles. Or in Storm Shadow's case, granola and/or blueberry bagels . . . why was she even thinking that? Hrm, some of the meds must be still in her system.)

But if there really _was _a spy in Joe, it could be any one of them. The thought chilled her, and added the little extra adrenaline she needed to keep moving. The long-timers might not suspect each other, but the way Annie saw it, longtime Joes might have _more _reason to snap. Stress, PTSD, resentment . . . or maybe just a plain old payoff from Cobra. For all anyone knew, Storm Shadow might not have really switched sides after all. She desperately wanted to be back in her infirmary bed, not sucking dust through a scrap of thin fabric and praying she didn't pass out or give herself a blood clot, but she had to do _something._

At least if she did get a blood clot, she'd have more time off PT. Granted, she'd probably also be off the Joes . . . but that was looking better and better at this point. She could still get her freaking college stipend in the regular Army, and do it someplace quieter, too. Like Afghanistan.

Speaking of Afghanistan, she still had an actual keffiyah in her locker. She should probably grab it if she planned on doing more vent-crawling.

Finally, after what felt like years, she thought she reached the right spot. Stopping to peer out of the closest vent grille, she saw mops, boxes, and a posted list of precautions in case of disaster and/or evacuation. A janitor's closet, the vent-crawling fugitive's best friend. Shuffling along to the next grille, moving as cautiously and silently as she could, she spotted exactly what she was after: the office of quartermaster affairs, or QMA for those in a hurry. A guard (she recognized him vaguely as one of the pigeons from Psyche-Out's office) was posted at the door—required, poor bastard, to stand watch over the precious inventory records that no sane person would actually steal. He must've ticked somebody off to get that job. Annie carefully backtracked to the janitor's closet and levered the grille out of place.

Getting out of the vents, head-first, was actually harder than getting into them. At least nobody was around to see her trying to get her head out of a bucket one-handed.

Before stepping out into the hallway, she took a quick inventory of herself. She was wearing the shredded remains of a hospital gown, plus standard-issue olive-drab sweatpants and a bright yellow sports bra. No shoes. She could take some of the janitors' spare coveralls (there were several pairs neatly folded on the shelf in the closet) but the shoes would be hard to explain . . .

Fuck it. This was a place where people wore lime-green quilted jackets and bright red jumpsuits with words printed on them. She shucked out of her pants and gown, pulled on the coveralls, wiped most of the dust and sweat off her face, and stepped out into the hallway. The floor was cold under her bare feet, but compared to the throbbing pain in her arm, it was actually kind of nice. Even better, she was a little small for the coveralls, and they obscured her cast nicely.

The MP at the door of the QMA gave her a slow up-and-down, and not the kind that went with a sexy dress, either. He leaned around her and studied the dirty footprints she'd left in the hall as if they were a rare objet d'art, his poker face magnificent in its detachedness.

"Huh," he said.

"Short Stack, 92G," Annie said, showing her dog tags. "I need to check the kitchen duty logs for the last two days."

"Huh," the MP said again. According to his name tape, his name was Long Arm, but in Annie's opinion it should've been Deadpan. "I recognize you." A trenchant pause. "Is there a reason you're not wearing shoes?"

"I got caught kicking the back of someone's seat in the mess," Annie responded sulkily. "Sergeant major said that boots were a privilege, and if I didn't understand that, I needed to learn it."

Long Arm glanced down at her bare toes, and Annie grimaced. "Socks are also a privilege."

"You guys never learn," Long Arm said, but he motioned her inside anyway. Annie saluted and tried to look put-upon. It wasn't hard.

Inside, the QMA was essentially a paperwork cocoon surrounding a couple of harassed file clerks. The back office was the realm of Storage Vault, the legendary head quartermaster, but the door was closed. He was probably down in the armory working on another ulcer, Annie guessed.

It was the work of a moment to request and get the kitchen duty logs. They wouldn't be open to just anyone, but Annie was a quartermaster, even if an irregularly-dressed one. With her nerves jangling the way they were and her knowledge of the high-speed gossip networks inside the Pit, she was half surprised they didn't tell Long Arm to collar her—but then, they didn't look like they'd left the office all day. For all they knew, she might've been released already. She thanked Beach Head for this unexpected bounty of luck as she quickly flipped through the duty logs.

On the day in question, the log had been filled out by Whiskey Down. Murphy checked in early, followed a few minutes later by Shingle and SOS. Her stomach dropped a little at the next line, though: Eighty-Six and Chopper had both been over thirty minutes late, and severely reprimanded for it. There was no specific reason given for their lateness, just this cryptic note in the margins: _Discipline becoming a problem._

When she'd seen them winking back and forth, she'd assumed Chopper and Eighty-Six were just a good ol' Joe-style case of frat reg violations. Which, come to think of it, was a perfect cover for doing something equally as rule-violating but not nearly as easily ignored.

Chopper, the nice easy guy. The ex-biker who'd had the suspicious bullets in his cupboard.

_Don't be stupid, _her brain told her. _He wouldn't be that careless. What would he have to gain?_

_ Don't rule anything out, _her inner paranoid shot back. _G.I. Joe is supposed to be super-secret, everyone is screened out the wazoo, and they STILL have a traitor problem. All bets are off._

Annie grunted a little as she handed the duty log back to the file clerk. She hated it when she argued with herself and lost.

* * *

Edwin Steen, alias Lifeline, was annoyed. He was annoyed because infirmary escapes were becoming a regular pastime. He was annoyed because Ace was placing blind-bag greenie bets again, and if he thought Lifeline didn't know that, he should be checked for head injuries. But most of all, he was annoyed because while he was in his office, he'd gotten a phone call instructing him _not_ to exert himself preventing his patient's escape.

Lifeline didn't believe in violence. After the upbringing inflicted on him by a supposed man of God, he had long ago decided that the only real way to benefit his fellow man was to do harm to none and heal without fear or favor. Unfortunately, his pacifism was sorely tested by an entire unit full of soldiers who viewed "doctor's orders" as "doctor's suggestions." Even the ones who were more likely to malinger in the infirmary than escape from it (step forward,Shipwreck) got a kick out of the various shenanigans perpetrated by commandos and Rangers who were supposed to be healing quietly.

But orders were orders, so he'd taken his time in his office before 'discovering' that she was gone. (Like anyone could miss that escape; she'd sounded like a drunk moose, banging around in the vents.) Once that time had passed, though, it was all fair game.

Black ops were a fact of life in G.I. Joe, and Lifeline knew very well that people were going to get hurt no matter what he did. He was a combat medic: much as he would have liked to haul people out of the fray entirely, half the time it just meant patching them up enough to let them dive right back into it. He understood that.

Once someone was in the infirmary, though, they probably weren't going to be dashing out onto the battlefield that second. And if someone had two broken bones, a concussion, and probable PTSD and delayed shock? That person needed to stay put. End of story. Allowing someone to escape, even for the sake of some kind of mysterious plan going on inside the Pit itself, went against everything Lifeline believed in. He might not be able to stop sick men from putting themselves in danger on the front lines, but he could damn well do his best to prevent it right here in the Pit.

Beach Head bullied people ruthlessly because he wanted them strong enough to survive. Lifeline kept them bed-bound, with tranquilizers if necessary, for exactly the same reasons. The irony of the comparison was not lost on him.

He wasn't a high enough rank to know the details of the black ops currently causing his patient to make a racket in the ducts, but Doc had hinted that it was something to do with the kitchen. So he dispatched Kitbag to watch the kitchen, Stretcher to patrol the corridors, and himself to lie in wait near the quartermasters' bunkroom.

* * *

Annie desperately wanted to just walk, but she couldn't chance being spotted by any angry medics. Once back in the janitor's closet, she stuffed the remnants of her mutilated hospital gown into the garbage and appropriated some cleaning rags and a proper dustmask from the stock on the shelves. Somebody would eventually notice the missing items and have to fill out the proper forms. Annie silently apologized to the custodial department for being the cause of paperwork . . . and, considering the dirty footprints she'd left in the hallway, regular old work too. If she didn't get thrown out of Joe or killed soon, she'd help them with the mopping and the forms.

Once into the vents (easier this time—stacking boxes and buckets until she could just wriggle in) she used the rags to strap up her bad arm and set off again. She'd got the hang of crawling now, and adrenaline or sheer exhaustion seemed to be taking the edge off the pain.

Unfortunately, when the pain's away the concussion will play. Annie stopped at the edge of the long vertical shaft and rested her head against her one good arm: her head was swimming again, and a horrible sickly sensation was building in the back of her throat. She didn't want to find out what would happen if she threw up into a dust mask, so she awkwardly wrenched it off and immediately regretted it. A fresh spasm of coughing convulsed her, and the sounds echoed up and down the shaft.

"I quit," she muttered hoarsely as the coughs subsided. "I signed up to cook food. Period. Here's some food, Annie, put it in a pan until the salmonella's dead. I don't care if Sergeant Major Asshole and the entire mystic ninja squad calls me a pussy, I'm gone. This? Is not salmonella." She coughed again and wiped her mouth. "Could be TB, though."

At which point she remembered that the vents carried all kinds of sound, and very gently banged her head against the wall.

It took a few minutes for the world to stop spinning, but it felt like years. While her sense of equilibrium was shot, the rest of her brain still seemed to be functioning, and it was spending the time berating her in language she hadn't thought she knew. The gist of it: _you're ignoring the real problem, you dingus. _

Ever since she'd gone to see Carter Hall with a carton of ice cream in hand, the entire world had gone completely Twilight-Zone-cuckoo, and she'd gotten caught up in the crazy. Now she was hanging out in a dusty air duct, waiting for the dizziness to subside so she could go interrogate a fellow quartermaster about the possibility of him being a spy. A fellow quartermaster named Chopper, who came across as one of the nicest, most guileless guys to ever bisect bones with a meat cleaver. Yeah. She was quitting.

Eventually, she managed to get her head clear enough to start the careful, painful ascent up the ladder. The bunkrooms used by support personnel tended to be locate on or near the level where they worked, which would make it easy to scope everything at once, but there were still multiple floors between the infirmary level and the kitchen level. She awkwardly wiped her face against the shoulder of her stolen coveralls and kept climbing.

It was a tricky business. Sweat was making her hands and bare feet unsteady on the rungs, and her good arm was aching worse than her bad one. As she hauled herself up past the second level, both feet slipped at once, and Annie let out a squawk as all her weight pulled down on her one working arm.

"Hate my job hate my job hate my job . . ." It became a mantra as she got her feet under her again. She didn't have to worry about people hearing her; she barely had enough breath to whisper, let alone yell. It would've been nice to yell.

After what felt like another eternity, she reached the right floor. Maybe. Her vision was blurring, and it was hard to be sure, but she sure as hell didn't have the strength to go any further up. Scrambling back into the horizontal ducts, she lay prone for a few moments, panting behind her dust mask. She didn't have any breath left for any more _hate my job_s, but the feeling was there. More and more, she found herself wishing she'd never left her tiny town and crappy family diner job.

Even Sergeant Major's PT had never exhausted her like this. Maybe if he was crawling through the ducts after her, yelling at her to crawl faster, gawddammit, ya damn slug of a cook . . . The thought made her smile a little, to her surprise. With PT pains, she had someone to blame. Now there was no one to hate except herself.

Well, herself and the spy. And Zartan. Her tight little ball of rage had been diminished by exhaustion, but it wasn't quite gone, and at the thought of Zartan it flared up again. Annie lay prone for a few minutes, feeding it: the memory of the humiliation, the pain in her broken arm, the sting of being declared a possible security hazard (well, to be fair she _was _AWOL from the infirmary, but she had a damn reason), the double sting of being locked out of the kitchen, and the steak sandwich. Carter Hall . . . He made her stomach clench, but with regret instead of rage, so she pushed the image of the dead toxo-viper aside and focused on the things that made her angry. There was quite a list at this point.

With renewed rage came a surge of adrenaline, and Annie started crawling again. Somebody really must be watching over her, because she'd picked the right floor. Only a few minutes of painful inching along brought her alongside the first of a set of familiar-looking rooms.

Storage C. Storage B. The blocked-off vents that would lead to Storage A, AKA the meat locker and walk-in freezer. The ducts branched, and Annie turned right, certain it would take her to the quartermasters' bunkrooms.

Fifteen minutes later, she was back where she'd begun, considerably dustier and with her temper hanging by a frayed thread. Stupid misleading mental floor plan.

Finally, she found what looked like the right vent. She paused next to it, took as deep a breath as she dared, and put her eye to the slits in the metal. There it was: the quartermasters' bunkroom, her own bed with the locker at the foot of it, Eighty-Six's little pictures of saints and celebrities, Eighty-Six wrapped around-

Holy _shit._ Annie jerked her head back, almost giving herself another concussion on the low ceiling of the duct.

This unit. Seriously. Frat regs didn't stand a chance. Not that Eighty-Six and Chopper were technically fraternizing—there was no Army regulation that specifically said you weren't allowed to spoon naked and enjoy afterglow with another soldier, after all—but . . . okay . . . seriously? Annie could feel her face and neck warming, and she covered her eyes with one dusty coverall sleeve, sure that she was turning red enough to give her away right through the vent. Awkward. Awkward with a capital A.

God, she felt creepy.

She waited until the footsteps, shuffling, and low-voiced words told her that the two of them were up again and dressed. Then she carefully peeked again, still red-faced.

Eighty-Six and Chopper weren't acting like conspirators. The big ex-biker tickled her, and she giggled and swatted his hand, calling him something obviously unprintable in Creole French. Annie covered her eyes again and scooted away from the vent as quietly as she could. Somewhere, Ma Gorshin would narrowing her eyes, sensing that her daughter was doing something She Really Oughtn't Be Doing.

After what felt like an embarrassing eternity, the door opened, and the heavier of the two sets of footsteps tapped away down the corridor. Annie dared to peek again. Eighty-Six was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, looking a little ruffled and dreamy. If she was a spy, this would be a perfect chance for her to start searching peoples' lockers and bunks . . . But she didn't, just sat there for a couple of minutes before getting up and leaving the room as well. Probably staggering her exit to avoid being seen leaving with Chopper.

Annie fell out of the vent, trailing dust. A momentary glimpse of herself in Eighty-Six's mirror made her yelp: she looked like the Cave Monster of Sandstorm IV, gray with vent scrapings and littered with paint chips and sweat patches.

"Graarrrh," she said, making claws out of her hands and growling at the mirror. The effect was actually quite impressive, though it sent yet another wave of pain through her exhausted arms. Grunting a little, she dropped her hands again and flopped down on her bed.

_I hate my job I hate my job I hate my job._

After a few moments of staring at nothing, she reluctantly hauled herself to her feet again, wiped her hands clean on a rag from her footlocker, and—and oh god, this part felt _really _wrong—went over to Eighty-Six's bunk. The other woman's own footlocker was sitting there, innocuous as ever, and Annie had to steel herself before she could open it. Well, that was it: once it became known that she'd done that, she was out of G.I. Joe. Might as well make good time of what she had left, right?

But there was . . . nothing. Clothes. Books. A Game Boy, of all things, with a copy of _Super Mario Land _still loaded in the cartridge slot. A few letters, all written in a mixture of French and English, their contents innocuous. A jar of dried peppers. Another jar labeled "Mama's Cider," but Annie didn't even need to sniff it to recognize the color and texture of apple-pie moonshine. Probably the good stuff, too. Maybe she should talk to Eighty-Six about her sources some time.

Souvenirs. Trinkets. The pieces of a life which were, quite frankly, none of Annie's business. And not a single sign of treachery or spying.

She put it all back, of course. As carefully as she could, making sure not to drop or tear anything. Then she sat back down on her own bunk, vaguely aware that she was leaving gray smears on the blankets, and wondered where to go next.

Go back to the infirmary? Tempting, especially since the world was beginning to spin again. Some part of her really, really wanted some goddamn morphine already, and never mind the lecture she'd get from an angry medic or two. But she still didn't have her hands on a spy, and that meant it could be anyone. If she went back to Lifeline . . . oh, hell, could _Lifeline _be the infiltrator? A long shot, but not an impossible one. He was trusted, after all, and seemed to have been with the unit a long time. And he was a pacifist. Maybe the constant grind of war had worn him down, and he was willing to take peace at any price, even if it meant shutting down the Joes?

Granted, she had absolutely nothing to base that suspicion on. But paranoia doesn't really need evidence.

Unless—a thought seized her tired brain, and it felt like a lightbulb had appeared over her head. _General Hawk._

There was nobody higher in G.I. Joe, and nobody else she could trust. Hawk might be a little cracked himself, but he'd never betray the unit; as far as anyone could tell, he _was _the unit. And she was a quartermaster who'd already met with Psyche-Out, which meant it would be easy for her to get into the administrative level. She should go straight to him, and bring him all the evidence she had.

Which wasn't much, true. But momentarily invigorated by the thought, Annie scooted down to the foot of the bed and pulled open her own footlocker. There was the feminine-hygiene box, lying innocuously on top of some jumbled clothes, exactly as she'd left it before going to see Carter Hall. From the look of things, it hadn't been touched, and she let out a small sigh of relief as she dug into it for the opened bullet.

Yes, still there: the long, thin rolls of crinkly yellow paper, punched with hundreds of dots, that spilled over her hands as she emptied the box into her lap. The halves of the bullet that had contained them plunked into her lap . . . followed a second later, to her surprise, by another whole bullet.

What? Oh, right! The one she'd had in her pocket when the others she collected had gone missing. Frowning, she picked up the bullet and examined it.

There were no numbers on this one's casing, but then, it had been in the steam tray for a while before she found it. The seam on its casing was there too, but much fainter and sleeker: this one looked like a professional job, maybe with a high-quality laser, while the other might've been done with a small-toothed hacksaw. It took Annie a few minutes of careful maneuvering with her dive knife to get it open.

Two tiny squares of paper, each no bigger than an inch and a half across, fell into her hands. Annie frowned at them. For a moment, the squares looked blank, but if she squinted she could almost make out little markings on them. One was covered in little pinprick-sized . . . somethings . . . and the other seemed to have some kind of geometric pattern, all squares. Weird.

After a moment's hesitation, she went back to Eighty-Six's locker and fished out the big jar of apple-pie moonshine. It was the good stuff, all right: orange-tinted but clear as water, guaranteed to put hairs on your chest and a fog on your corneas. She checked the lid, making sure it was on tight, before tipping it on its side and rolling it over the first of the two little squares. Bingo, a makeshift magnifying glass.

It took a few seconds for her to realize what she was looking at. The first paper was actually some kind of document, shrunk down to a microfiche square the size of a sugar packet. She pressed her eye to the glass and squinted, frowning.

_. . . ssignments . . . sergeants Sna . . . nd Storm Sha . . . pushed back 72 hours . . . ituation is unstable, interference may not be required . . . nitor for continued . . . _

It was a photograph of a duty log, stamped 'CLASSIFIED' in what must have been big red letters before the black-and-white microfiche copy was taken. And it was dated three days after Annie arrived at the Pit, perhaps one day before she'd fished the bullet containing it out of the steam tray.

This wasn't obviously devious or complex like the rolls of onionskin covered in code. This was something that had been grabbed quickly on the sly, probably because the situation was urgent. Someone on the inside had intended to tell someone on the outside where the ninjas were likely going to be—or in this case, not going to be. Sergeant Snake-Eyes and Sergeant Storm Shadow were supposed to be off-base on the following day, but the schedule had changed, and someone was trying to share that information.

And the next day? Pitfall.

It was with a strange feeling of nervousness that she rolled the jar over the other microfiche. What seemed at first to be a tiny pattern of little squares turned out to be floor plans for three separate levels of the Pit, all shrunk down for easy transport.

Annie's stomach twisted. No wonder Cobra's invasion of the Pit had been haphazard. The enemy forces were missing crucial intel.

Was it really that simple, though? She picked two bullets out of a steam tray and accidentally cut Cobra's lines of communication? Seriously? If that was all it had taken, then she was willing to bet that Cobra had more problems than just trouble keeping contact with its people. Why wouldn't a terrorist spy have a better way to contact his boss than this roundabout with fake bullets?

Well, Annie Gorshin wasn't any goddamn Sherlock. Frowning, she wrapped the microfiches up in one of the scraps of cleaning rag and stuffed it into her bra. The hygiene-box trick had taught her that if nothing else, whoever was burgling her own locker wasn't willing to get too personal, and this information had to get to General Hawk despite any stray pickpockets that might be around.

But it was a straight fact that she couldn't crawl any more. Her arms felt like they were made of hot lead, and the mere thought of getting back in those vents was worse than the thought of triple PT on no sleep. She'd have to go through the corridors, and brazen it out with anybody who tried to stop her. Pulling off her dust mask, Annie smoothed down her hair and poked her head out of the bunkroom door.

She immediately registered three things. One: the lights were incredibly bright after the semi-dimness of the vents and the bunkroom. Two: there was a tiny little flicker of colorful motion in the corner of her eye. Three, _ow, _that was a cold sharp pain in her _neck-_

The world blurred again, and Annie's legs suddenly decided not to support her. Frowning a little in dazed bewilderment, she flopped to the ground, blinking and trying to focus. Everything felt fuzzy, warm and a little soft, like wrapping herself up in a good fleece blanket.

A pair of red legs stopped in front of her. They looked familiar, and one had white lettering on it. Annie blinked, wondering if it was possible to stack concussions.

"I told you," the calm voice of an evil pacifist said. "No escaping."

Sleep. Sleep sounded really good right then.


End file.
